The Effects of a Parent-Implemented Language Intervention on Late-Talkers’ Expressive Skills: The Mediational Role of Parental Speech Contingency and Dialogic Reading Abilities

Abstract

Several qualitative and quantitative features of parental speech input support children’s language development and may play a critical role in improving such process in late talkers. Parent-implemented interventions targeting late-talkers have been developed to promote children’s language outcomes by enhancing their linguistic environment, i.e., parental speech input. This study investigated the effect of a parent-implemented intervention in increasing late talkers’ expressive skills through modifications in structural and functional features of parental speech input. Forty-six thirty-one-month-old late talkers differing in their birth condition (either low-risk preterm or full-term) participated in the study with a parent; 24 parent-child dyads received a parent-implemented intervention centered on dialogic reading and focused stimulation techniques, whereas the other 22 dyads constituted the control group. At pre- and post-intervention, dyads took part in a parent-child shared book-reading session and both parental and child’s speech measures were collected and examined. Results showed that the intervention positively affected parents’ use of responses and expansions of children’s verbal initiatives, as well as the parental amount of talking over reading, whereas no structural features of parental input resulted modified. Mediation analyses pointed out that the intervention indirectly enhanced late-talkers’ use of verbal types and tokens through changes in parental use of expansions and amount of talking over reading. As birth status was entered as a covariate in the analysis, these findings can be extended to children with different gestational age. We conclude that the parent-implemented intervention was effective in supporting late-talkers’ gains in language development as a cascade result of the improvements in parental contingency and dialogic reading abilities. These promising findings suggest to examine not only children and parental outcomes but also the intervention mechanisms promoting changes in late-talkers’ language development as a clearer view on such process can inform the development of feasible, ecological and effective programs.

Semantic Contingency of Maternal Verbal Input Directed at Very Preterm and Full-Term Children

“…From the observed pattern of correlations, a particular role in this type of interrelations seems to be played by maternal utterances aimed at expanding children's productions and, limited to very preterm children, imitating them, a result, the latter, in line with that found for Italian late talkers (Girolametto et al, 2002;Suttora et al, 2021). Both these linguistic strategies emphasize the communicative value of the child's vocal/verbal productions and, at the same time, lead the child to focus his/her attention on a new stimulus inserted in an immediate and familiar linguistic context, thus facilitating the extraction of relevant information and enhancing child language development (Girolametto et al, 1999).…”

Book-Sharing for Toddlers with Clefts (BOOST): Protocol for a randomized controlled trial of a remote intervention to promote language development in children with cleft palate

“…The intensity of our intervention is another consideration, and we acknowledge that three 50-minute visits are modest. The results of meta-analyses have been somewhat contradictory on the minimum duration needed for similar interventions, with some indication that interventions of 90 minutes or greater produce significant treatment gains and others suggesting that longer duration is necessary for populations at significant risk for language delays [ 13 , 14 ]. Ultimately, a lower-intensity intervention was needed to deliver the program at scale while minimizing participant burden and maximizing subsequent adaptation into standard cleft care.…”

“…Most of these studies have been conducted with children who are typically developing. However, some evidence supports the efficacy of similar approaches with children who have language delays or are at risk for language delays [ 14 ]. Benefits are observed regardless of families’ socioeconomic status (SES), race and ethnicity, and language(s) spoken in the home [ 15 ].…”

Towards a Characterization of Late Talkers: The Developmental Profile of Children with Late Language Emergence through a Web-Based Communicative-Language Assessment

“…There is also evidence that communicative skills may explain the portions of variance of language scores in children with different onset and persistence of language delay, even if these are not the core variables in describing the developmental paths of LTs [ 31 ]. Finally, the interactional features of communication are often considered when delivering early indirect language interventions for children with late language emergence to support their language development [ 52 , 53 ]. However, a child’s SCS are not always directly assessed or trained.…”