Efficacy of AMALS in Treating Language Impairment in Children
Condition: Language Disorder
MeSH terms: Language Disorders
Intervention: AMALS; DTA
Intervention description: Addressing multiple aspects of language simultaneously; Discrete Trial Approach
Phase: Phase 2
Study type: Interventional
Primary purpose: Treatment
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention model: Parallel Assignment
Masking: Single (Participant)
Enrollment: 40.0
Sex: All
Minimum age: 4 Years
Maximum age: 6 Years
Healthy volunteers: No

Summary:

      The goal of this proposal is to examine the efficacy of a manualized treatment intervention,
      AMALS: Addressing Multiple Aspects of Language Simultaneously, which is designed to remediate
      semantic, morphological, and syntactic aspects of language in preschool children with
      language impairment. This study will target preschool children with language impairment
      living in a region characterized by nonmainstream dialects.

      Questions driving this work are:

        1. Will children participating in the AMALS treatment exhibit greater semantic,
           morphological, and syntactic complexity on multiple outcome measures at the completion
           of the intervention compared to a Discrete Trial Approach (DTA) group?

        2. Will these gains be maintained at one-month follow up?

        3. What is the impact of dialect on dependent variables, specifically morphosyntactic
           abilities?

      To answer these questions a randomized clinical trial will be conducted comparing AMALS, an
      integrated approach to treatment, with DTA, an additive approach to therapy. In this study
      rather than restrict the ethnic and cultural backgrounds of this population, children's use
      of dialect will be uniquely identified and examined.
    

Eligibility criteria:

        Inclusion Criteria:

          1. Demonstrate sufficient intelligibility as determined by a score of 85% on percent
             consonant correct (PCC) measures;

          2. Demonstrate sufficient phonological ability to use grammatical morphemes as determined
             by use of word-final /s, z, t, d/ on sound- in-word subtest from the Goldman-Fristoe
             Test of Articulation-2 (GFTA; Goldman & Fristoe, 2000)

          3. Nonverbal IQ above 70 as scored on the Columbia Mental Maturity Scale (CMMS;
             Burgemeister, Blum, & Lorge, 1972);

          4. Below 1SD on the Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation: Norm-referenced Test
             (DELV; Seymour, Roeper & de Villiers, 2005);

          5. Below 1.39SD on the Structured Photographic Expressive Language Test-Preschool
             (SPELT-P; Werner & Kresheck, 1983);

          6. Documentation from teachers and/or parents of impressions of language status in
             comparison with peers;

          7. More than one standard deviation below the mean on both levels 3 and 4 of the
             Preschool Language Assessment Instrument (PLAI; Blank, Rose, & Berlin, 1978).

        Exclusion Criteria:

          1. English as the primary language

          2. No oral-motor impairment

          3. No hearing impairment

          4. No co-morbid psychiatric or neurological impairments