Assessment-Informed Intervention for Aphasia in an Older Adult: Transfer of Stimulus Control Procedure Considerations.

Waddington et al. (2021) worked with one older adult who had aphasia after a stroke.

First they ran a short language assessment to see which words the person still understood.

Then they taught those words with a prompt-delay plan: show picture, wait two seconds, give spoken cue if needed, then fade the cue out.

The man said the target words on his own more often after each session.

Gains stayed high when the team came back weeks later.

Picking the words through assessment made the teaching faster and cleaner.

Mace et al. (1990) also used fading, but with kids who had developmental delays. They saw the same jump in correct answers and drop in errors, showing the tactic works across ages.

Einfeld et al. (1995) paired a quick functional analysis with treatment and got fast behavior change, just like Hannah did with language.

Dove et al. (1974) showed pigeons can shift control from one cue to another in the lab; Hannah shows the same shift can happen with spoken words in a person.

You can borrow this two-step plan tomorrow. Run a five-minute language probe to find words the client still partly knows. Then use a two-second prompt delay to strengthen them. No extra tools needed—just a timer and your voice. It saves time and keeps therapy focused on what the person actually needs.