Systematic Review of Naturalistic Language Interventions in Schools: Child- and Adult-Level Outcomes for Verbal Communication

Naturalistic language interventions are commonly recommended to educators when teaching children to reliably share their wants, interests, and feelings with others. Recommendations include providing focused attention on a child and embedding multiple instructional opportunities within and across activities. Although such practices are commonly recommended, educators have multiple responsibilities throughout the day and need practical guidelines for implementing these relatively complex procedures in practice. The purpose of this review was to identify experimental studies where educators were trained to conduct naturalistic language interventions in schools for the purposes of improving verbal social communication in children with or at risk for disabilities. We identified a total of 38 experimental studies published in 19 articles. Most studies were conducted by classroom teachers with children with autism spectrum disorder. Inadequate methodological rigor limited the applicability of findings for guiding educators in practice. Practical implications for evaluating naturalistic language interventions in schools are discussed.