Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of using implicit instruction with recast alone and recast with auditory bombardment to improve the use of grammatical inflections past tense – ed and third-person singular -s in children with language impairment. Method: This investigation consisted of three participants, ages 10-11, who presented with moderate to severe language disorders. A non-concurrent, multiple baseline across participants design was utilized. This investigation took place across three phases: baseline, pre-intervention, and intervention. In the pre-assessment, deficits in the use of inflections were determined by language sampling. During the baseline phase, treatment-evoked trials were initiated. Participants received recast for correct responses. In the treatment-evoked trials, there was no reinforcement or corrective feedback provided when the child responded appropriately. After the baseline phase, but before the intervention phase, the participants engaged in pre-intervention activities designed to introduce the concept of morphology, provide learning activities focused on identifying affixes and root words, and introducing the target inflections past tense -ed and third-person singular -s. Results: During the intervention phase, participants used their new knowledge and wordless picture scenes to assist in the production of sentences where target inflections were required. At the end of this five-week investigation, it was concluded that two of the three participants demonstrated progress that could be attributed to the onset of the intervention. Conclusion: One participant demonstrated improvement during the baseline phase, and that progress continued through the intervention phase. This improvement, however, could not be attributed to the intervention as a trend could not be established during the baseline phase; therefore, the improvement could be attributed to factors other than the initiation of the intervention. The results of this investigation suggest that the use of recast with auditory bombardment for improving the use of grammatical inflections past tense -ed and third-person singular was effective.
