Table 2 Description of the specific PILI verbal response strategies

Recasts

Models of a more mature version of the youth’s verbalization that provided an opportunity to learn new linguistic means of expressing the same meaning (e.g., “boy run” could be recast as “the boy is running in the yard.”). Recasts also serve to acknowledge and reinforce the youth’s conversational turn.

WH questions

Open-ended WH questions (e.g., “What is the boy doing?” and “How is the boy feeling?”) that prompt the child to provide an on-topic verbal response, engage the youth with FXS in the storytelling activity, support his/her practice of language skills, and improve the youth’s understanding of story details as well as his/her ability to retell the story in his/her own words. The youth’s responses provide an opportunity for the parent to recast the youth’s verbalization or provide story-related talking to model the appropriate response.

Fill-in-the-blank (FIB) prompts

Starting a sentence and then using a rising intonation and pause to mark an expectation that the youth with FXS is to complete the sentence (e.g., “the doggy is being chased by the …” that prompts the youth to say, “girl”). FIBs convey to the youth that an on-topic response is expected and support successful participation in the storytelling, but with minimal linguistic demands on the youth with FXS. The youth’s responses to a FIB prompt provided an opportunity for the parent to recast the youth’s verbalization or provide story-related talking to model the appropriate response.