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Ethical Obligation Paper

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Many of these challenges revolve around the training of individuals serving this population of children. There are four main issues that need to be addressed, a) How equipped is the professional to assess the child’s communicative ability in the language that the child speaks at home, b) How can they support language development in these children who already suffer developmental delays sometimes globally, c) deciding what language to use in intervention, d) how best can they counsel a parent in their language and culture to access community help. It cannot be overemphasized that the behavior analysts need to materialize their ethical obligation to target socially significant behaviors in the light of language interventions that already target …show more content…

They compared bilingualism in children with typical development and those with communication disorders. They emphasized that children become bilingual to a different degree; using different paths. For some, there is an exposure to a different language at a very early stage in life, and for some it only occurs once they are 3 years old, and enter the schools for education. In some cases when the home language is not supported in school, the child will have reduced opportunities to experiment the language thus becoming receptively bilingual, meaning they would understand their home language but lack in expressive skills in that language. However, Kohnert (2010) reports that continued support in the home language during preschool years is directly related to cognitive and academic gains in later age. While the research has ample advantages of a bilingual environment for typically developing kid but it changes when a kid has a developmental delay or communication disorder like autism. Most parents and professionals are still fearful of using more than one language with children who have significant communication problems. The authors elaborated that there is a significant scarcity in the literature comparing the performance of bilingual and monolingual children with communication disorders. However, they agreed to a growing body of research that maintains that bilingual children with disabilities can use their first language to acquire a second language if trained systematically. Authors maintain that children who are exposed to two languages may benefit to a great degree from a bilingual approach to intervention. (e.g., Kohnert, 2010, 2013). Finally on the serving needs of children who are bilingual and with a communication

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