Training Grammar With Meaning

University of Arizona

Status: Enrolling

Conditions: Language Disorders in Children

Treatments: Behavioral: Enhanced Conversational Recast treatment

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT06250101

DLD-Tx2

Details and patient eligibility

About

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.

Full description

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.

Enrollment: 24 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 48 to 83 months old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

Language scores consistent with a developmental language disorder nonverbal cognitive scores consistent with normal-range intellectual functioning

Exclusion criteria

hearing loss Intellectual disability Other handicapping conditions

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Non-Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Double Blind

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24 participants in 2 patient groups

Grammar treatment including semantic support

Experimental group

Description:

Children receiving grammatical treatment will also receive a simple explanation concerning the meaning of verbs used to elicit grammatical forms.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Enhanced Conversational Recast treatment

Grammatical treatment excluding semantic support

Active Comparator group

Description:

Children receiving grammatical treatment will not receive any explanation concerning the meaning of verbs used to elicit grammatical forms.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Enhanced Conversational Recast treatment