This study will enroll children between the ages of 4 and 6 years of age who exhibit significant difficulty developing language skills without any other handicapping conditions. Children will receive standardized language, hearing, and cognitive testing to confirm a diagnosis of developmental language disorder. Children will be enrolled in a half-day summer camp program for six weeks during which they will receive treatment designed to improve their language skills. Children will be seen again approximately six weeks after the end of treatment to determine how much learning they have retained.
Children between 4 years, 0 months and 6 years 11 months are eligible. A diagnosis of developmental language disorders will be confirmed as normal nonverbal cognitive function, passing a pure-tone audiometric screening, and a test score consistent with developmental language disorder on a standardized language test, and parent report of no other diagnosed handicapping condition. Speech skills and vocabulary skills will be described via standardized testing. Children enrolled in treatment are seen for up to 28 consecutive weekdays. The study starts with three days of baseline assessment of morpheme use for potential treatment targets. Two are selected for study, with one treated and one tracked over the course of treatment. Treatment is embedded in child-friendly activities like games, book reading, and craft activities. Children are prompted to use the treated morpheme in conversation. Immediately following this attempt, the treating clinician repeats the child's utterance, correcting any ungrammatical forms. Half of the children will also receive explanations of what the key words in sentences mean (e.g., to twirl means to turn around fast). Generalization to untreated contexts is assessed 2-3 times weekly. Retention of learning is measured about six weeks after the end of treatment.
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation
NON_RANDOMIZED
Purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
DOUBLE
Enrollment
24
In the context of child-friendly activities, the clinician prompts the child to attempt to use the grammatical form targeted in the treatment. The clinician immediately restates the child's attempt (i.e., the recast), correcting any ungrammatical elements. Clinicians elicit and recasts 24 utterances per session.
The University of Arizona
Tucson, Arizona, United States
Change in the Use of Treated Grammatical Forms in Untreated Contexts
Clinicians elicit ten uses of the trained grammatical form using toys, activities, and vocabulary with-held from treatment sessions. This is done in a conversational interaction between the clinician and child during play or stories using toys and is referred to as a 'generalization probe'. Because children begin treatment with different levels of pretreatment use, measures like percent use at the end of treatment do not accurately reflect treatment effects. Instead, for each child, data from three generalization probes obtained over a week at the end of treatment are averaged. This average, minus the average of three consecutive pre-treatment probe sessions, divided by the standard deviation of the three end-treatment probes constitutes a Generalization d. This reflects for the amount of change each individual child showed from their pre-treatment baseline, in units of standard deviation. The Generalization d serves as the dependent measure for group statistical analysis.
Time frame: Three days over the course of the final week (week 5) of treatment
Change in the Use of Untreated Grammatical Forms in Untreated Contexts
Clinicians elicit ten uses of the trained grammatical form using toys, activities, and vocabulary with-held from treatment sessions. This is done in a conversational interaction between the clinician and child during play or stories using toys and is referred to as a 'generalization probe'. Because children begin treatment with different levels of pretreatment use, measures like percent use at the end of treatment do not accurately reflect treatment effects. Instead, for each child, data from three generalization probes obtained over a week at the end of treatment are averaged. This average, minus the average of three consecutive pre-treatment probe sessions, divided by the standard deviation of the three end-treatment probes constitutes a Generalization d. This reflects the amount of change each individual child showed from their pre-treatment baseline, in units of standard deviation. The Generalization d serves as the dependent measure for group statistical analysis.
Time frame: Three days over the course of the final week (week 5) of treatment
Retention of Trained Grammatical Forms
Clinicians elicit ten uses of the trained grammatical form using toys, activities, and vocabulary with-held from treatment sessions. This is done in a conversational interaction between the clinician and child during play or stories using toys and is referred to as a 'retention probe' when done, as here, after a period of no treatment. The dependent measure is the number correct out of 10 opportunities for use of the grammatical form.
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Time frame: 1 day, 1-2 months after the end of treatment
Retention of Untrained Grammatical Forms
Clinicians elicit ten uses of the trained grammatical form using toys, activities, and vocabulary with-held from treatment sessions. This is done in a conversational interaction between the clinician and child during play or stories using toys and is referred to as a 'retention probe' when done, as here, after a period of no treatment. The dependent measure is the number correct out of 10 opportunities for use of the grammatical form.
Time frame: 1 day, 1-2 months from the end of treatment