Effects of Lexical Intervention on the Phonology of Late Talkers

Abstract

The purpose of this investigation is to determine whether a focused stimulation intervention focusing on lexical training has indirect, secondary effects on children's phonological abilities. Twenty-five toddlers with expressive vocabulary delays and their mothers were randomly assigned to intervention and control groups. The children were between 23 and 33 months of age at entry into the study and were at the single-word stage of language development. Parents of late talkers in the experimental group were trained to employ frequent, highly concentrated presentations of target words without requiring responses. Two measures of phonological diversity (i.e., syllable structure level and consonant inventory) and one measure of accuracy of production (i.e., percent consonants correct) were measured prior to and following intervention within the context of mother-child interactions. The toddlers who received intervention made treatment gains in two areas of phonological ability. They used a greater variety of complex syllable shapes and expanded their speech sound inventories to include more consonant sounds in both initial and final position. In contrast, there were no effects of language treatment on the accuracy of correct production when compared to the adult phonological system.

Screening for Speech and Language Delay in Preschool Children: Systematic Evidence Review for the US Preventive Services Task Force

“…Twenty-five RCTs in 24 publications met inclusion criteria, including 1 rated good, 72 13 rated fair, [73][74][75][76][77][78][79][80][81][82][83][84][85] and 11 rated poor quality 77,[86][87][88][89][90][91][92][93][94][95] (Table 7). Studies were considered to be of poor quality if they reported important differences between intervention and comparison groups at baseline, did not use intention-to-treat analysis, no method of randomization was reported, or there were Ͻ10 subjects in the intervention or comparison groups.…”

“…Several studies used established approaches to therapy such as the Ward Infant Language Screening Test, Assessment, Acceleration, and Remediation program 96 and the Hanen principles. 78,79,85,93 Others used more theoretical approaches such as focused stimulation, 78,79,86,87,93 auditory discrimination, 83,90 imitation or modeling procedures, 76,92 auditory processing or work mapping, 85 and play narrative language. 80,81 Some interventions focused on specific words and sounds, used unconventional methods, or targeted a specific deficit.…”

“…One good 72 and 6 fair-quality [77][78][79][80]84,85 studies evaluated speech and language interventions for children who were 2 to 3 years old. The studies reported improvement on a variety of communication domains including clinician-directed treatment for expressive and receptive language, 80 parent-directed therapy for expressive delay, 77,78 and clinician-directed receptive auditory comprehension.…”

“…84 In 3 studies, there were no between-group differences for clinician-directed expressive 72,85 or receptive language therapy, 72,85 parent-directed expressive or receptive therapy, 85 or parent-directed phonology treatment. 79 …”

Screening for Speech and Language Delay in Children 5 Years Old and Younger: A Systematic Review

“…Of 2 trials of parent-mediated interventions, 1 found that a modified Hanen Parent Program had significant effects on consonant inventory and syllable structure. 67 In the other trial, parents engaged the child in activities directed at discrimination of sounds. 63 Children in the control condition improved more in auditory discrimination in the presence of background noise than experimental subjects.…”