Ming explains how to test whether a speech-delayed child actually understands you. Use commands with contrasting choices: ask them to pick the orange from apple and banana, or the plate from basket and box. If they can follow decontextualized commands during daily routines, they're discriminating the keywords.
You can also do this in a very structured setting, like put the something in the something. You can put something that's totally not correct, and you must have a contrast. So back to the topic about contrastive element commands. What does that mean? It means that when the child has to listen to two keywords, there must be a contrast for each element. So if you say orange, there must be orange in an apple and a banana or whatever, at least there must be two. If you talk about a plate, there must be a place, more than one place. So you have a plate, a basket, a box or whatever. And to the child, it's going to be like 25% that your child can guess it correct. And therefore that's something you can check immediately with a decontextualized command. You can do your daily commands and change the words there. And also you can do these contrastive commands.
