Emergent Bilinguals: Child Language Proficiency and Language of Treatment

Part of paid clinical trials in Houston, Texas.

Sponsor
University of Houston
Study ID
NCT06866223
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 emergent Spanish-English bilingual children with DLD. This project will examine the relationship between language proficiency and the language of intervention, considering monolingual intervention (Spanish or English) and interleaved Spanish-English intervention with the goal of improving language outcomes and thereby strengthening long-term academic achievement

Key Dates

Start date
Nov 11, 2024
Status verified
Mar 2025
Primary completion
Dec 1, 2027
Completion
Jul 1, 2028

Study Design

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

Arms

  • Experimental: Monolingual therapy
    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 the dominant language of the child (Spanish or English).
  • Experimental: Interleaved therapy
    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 will receive therapy in the dominant language (Spanish or English) and will also be offered the opportunity to use the non-dominant language (Spanish or English) via communication bid in the child's non-dominant language every 3-5 minutes and continue in that language as long as the child responds. If the child does not respond or responds in their dominant language, the examiner will switch to the other language.

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)] ]

Locations (1)

FacilityCityStateZIPSite coordinators
University of HoustonHoustonTexas77204
Anny Castilla-Earls, PhD
[email protected]
713-7430488

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By research site
University of Houston· Houston, TX

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