Building Complex Language
Condition: Language Development Disorders; Learning Disorders
MeSH terms: Learning Disabilities; Language Development Disorders
Study type: Interventional
Phase: Phase 1/Phase 2

Summary: 
      This study is designed to examine how much therapy is needed in order to make significant
      gains in knowledge and use of complex sentences. Students will be randomly placed in
      individual treatment sessions that take place either once or twice per week for nine weeks.
      All will receive the same type of treatment, which consists of a focused series of oral and
      written language activities. While it is anticipated that students in both groups will
      benefit from treatment, we hypothesize that the twice-weekly session frequency will have a
      significantly greater impact on level of performance and maintenance of skills after
      treatment.
    

Detailed description: 
      The objective of this project is to examine outcomes of a treatment intervention designed to
      increase functional use of complex (multi-clausal) sentences in school-age students with
      primary language impairments that impact literacy and academic achievement. The treatment
      protocol includes: (1) three types of complex sentences (adverbial, relative, object
      complement), (2) encounters with complex sentences in real texts and across all modalities
      (speaking, listening, reading, writing, and (3) activities that engage metalinguistic
      understanding of complex sentences. Specific objectives are to (1) document treatment effect
      in terms of size and scope of impact in decontextualized as well as naturalistic language
      contexts, (2) document the effect of treatment intensity (dosage), (3) explore effects of
      sentence complexity subtype and treatment outcomes, and (4) explore relationships between
      treatment outcomes and participant variables (pre-treatment knowledge of complex sentences,
      verbal working memory, and non-verbal cognition).

      The study will utilize two designs. Approximately 10 participants per year will complete the
      treatment, randomly assigned to one of two treatment levels. As each participant finishes,
      efficacy and effect size will be measured using a multiple-baseline single-subject design.
      Once all 30 participants have completed the treatment, effect size and the impact of dosage
      (treatment intensity) will be evaluated using a pretest-posttest group design, and
      correlations between participant characteristics and individual patterns of performance will
      be carefully described and analyzed.

      This study targets school-age students with a Speech-Language Impairment and/or a Specific
      Learning Disability between the ages of 10 and 14 who are receiving services from a
      Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP) for one or more higher-level language behaviors. It is
      expected that participants will demonstrate higher levels of fluency with complex sentences
      compared with pretreatment baseline levels and that treatment effects will be reflected in
      several modalities and in naturalistic language contexts.
    

Intervention name(s): Complex sentence treatment protocol
Intervention type(s): Behavioral
Intervention description(s): Treatment: listening, speaking, reading, and writing activities that teach three types of complex sentences. Individual sessions are 40 minutes in length, delivered by or under the supervision of a certified, trained speech-language pathologist.
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention model: Parallel Assignment
Masking: Single (Outcomes Assessor)
Primary purpose: Treatment
Keywords: language development disorders; learning disorders; sentences; syntax; school-age; language