The Relationship Between Child Language Proficiency and Language of Treatment on the Outcomes of Bilingual Children with Developmental Language Disorder

Part of paid clinical trials in Houston, Texas.

Sponsor
University of Houston
Study ID
NCT06085300
Status
Recruiting
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Conditions

  • Developmental Language Disorder
  • Language Impairment

Eligibility Criteria

Sex
ALL
Age
4 Years - 6 Years
Healthy Volunteers
Accepted

Interventions

  • Sentence recast — BEHAVIORAL
    Recast therapy is a well-established treatment for grammar in children with DLD. In this treatment, the adult repeats the child's own utterance, altering it to include the taught structure. It yields consistent large effect sizes (Hedge's g = 0.7-1.0) when focused on a single target and provided at a high dose (10-20 hrs. of therapy at a rate of \~1 recast/minute or \~600-1000 recasts total) for both morphology and syntax .

Study Details

Of the 12 million children in the USA growing up bilingual, about 1 million experience Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), a disorder in language learning and use. Currently there is no guidance for speech language pathologists (SLPs) as to the language of intervention for bilingual children with DLD with differing degrees of proficiency with English or Spanish. This project will examine the relationship between relative language proficiency and the language of intervention, considering monolingual intervention in English and Spanish and bilingual intervention presented by alternating English and Spanish treatment sessions with the goal of improving language outcomes and thereby strengthening long-term academic achievement.

Key Dates

Start date
Aug 8, 2023
Status verified
Jan 2025
Primary completion
May 1, 2028
Completion
May 1, 2028

Study Design

Enrollment
120 participants (estimated)
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Intervention model
CROSSOVER
Primary purpose
TREATMENT

Arms

  • Experimental: sentence recast in Spanish only
    A trained, bilingual SLP will treat the targeted structure at a rate of \~ 1 recast per minute, for 16 hours spread over 9 weeks to obtain a planned dose of 912-1008 recasts (960 +/- 5%). Following evidence on enhanced conversational recasting, the SLP will obtain the child's attention before recasting and systematically vary the lexical items in the recasts. Children receiving monolingual Spanish therapy will have the entire treatment session conducted in Spanish.
  • Experimental: sentence recast in English only
    A trained, bilingual SLP will treat the targeted structure at a rate of \~ 1 recast per minute, for 16 hours spread over 9 weeks to obtain a planned dose of 912-1008 recasts (960 +/- 5%). Following evidence on enhanced conversational recasting , the SLP will obtain the child's attention before recasting and systematically vary the lexical items in the recasts. Children receiving monolingual English therapy will have the entire treatment session conducted in English.
  • Experimental: sentence recast - Bilingual (Spanish+English) intervention
    Treatment will differ from monolingual therapy in that the child will be seen by two SLPs in keeping with one-person one-language models. This allows us to ensure that the dose in each language is controlled and supports the use of both languages evenly in therapy. Sessions will alternate between English-only therapy and Spanish-only therapy - thus the child will receive 8 hours of therapy treating the selected target in English and 8 hours treating the selected target in Spanish. A child in bilingual therapy will receive approximately 456-504 (480 +/- 5%) recasts in each language for a total of 912-1008 recasts combined.

Primary Outcome Measure

Accuracy on elicited production probes (conditional or nominal) [ Time Frame: ~1 month before (Pre), 2 weeks before second structure (Mid) and 2 weeks after treatment (Post test) ]

Central Contacts

Locations (1)

FacilityCityStateZIPSite coordinators
School DistricstHoustonTexas77204-

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School Districst· Houston, TX

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