Objective: Parents and teachers have been trained to use affirmative language to increase positive behaviors and improve learning. While this approach benefits these goals, researchers have not addressed the possibility that minimizing negative language may impact children’s understanding and use of language negation. According to Knolle and Montag exposure to language negation and complex sentence structures improves a child’s ability to comprehend and use them. This investigation sought to determine if increasing a young child’s exposure to langauge negation in a positive play-oriented setting would increase their functional comprehension of negation. Method: Three participants aged 3 years, 11 months to 4 years, 3 months received nine 30-minute intervention sessions in an individual virtual setting in this non-concurrent multiple baseline investigation. The total investigation was 8 weeks. Figurines and accessories were the primary sources of materials used to demonstrate negation during each session. The participants demonstrated their understanding of negations in each session using pictures they could draw on. Participants were assessed at the start of each session to determine what they retained from the previous session. Results: Results indicated that the use of positive exposure to “no” and “not” was an effective intervention to improve children’s comprehension of negation. This study gives insight into the benefits of using play-oriented therapy to target negation with 3 – and 4-year-old chidlren and highlights the potential for further research in this area.
