The Effectiveness of Two Grammar Treatment for Children With SLI (Smith-Lock et al., 2015)

Purpose This study compared the effectiveness of two grammar treatment procedures for children with specific language impairment.

Method A double-blind superiority trial with cluster randomization was used to compare a cueing procedure, designed to elicit a correct production following an initial error, to a recasting procedure, which required no further production. Thirty-one 5-year-old children with specific language impairment participated in 8 small group, classroom-based treatment sessions. Fourteen children received the cueing approach and 17 received the recasting approach.

Results The cueing group made significantly more progress over the 8-week treatment period than the recasting group. There was a medium–large treatment effect in the cueing group and a negligible effect size in the recasting group. The groups did not differ in maintenance of treatment effects 8 weeks after treatment. In single-subject analyses, 50% of children in the cueing group and 12% in the recasting group showed a significant treatment effect. Half of these children maintained the treatment effect 8 weeks later.

Conclusion Treatment that used a structured cueing hierarchy designed to elicit a correct production following a child's error resulted in significantly greater improvement in expressive grammar than treatment that provided a recast following an error.

目的 本项研究旨在对比两种语法治疗方法对于患有特定语言障碍儿童的疗效。方法 采用双盲随机分组试验，对一种旨在引发初始错误后的正确产出的提示程序与一种无需进一步产出的重构程序进行对比。31名患有特定语言障碍的5岁儿童参与了8次小规模、基于课堂的治疗课程。其中14名儿童接受了提示方法的治疗，而17名儿童接受了重构方法的治疗。结果 在8周的治疗期间，提示组的进步显著优于重构组。提示组显示出中等至较大的治疗效果，而重构组的治疗效果可忽略不计。两组在治疗8周后的治疗效果保持方面没有差异。在单一受试者分析中，提示组的50%和重构组的12%的儿童显示出显著的治疗效果。其中一半的儿童在8周后仍维持治疗效果。结论 采用结构化的提示层次结构，旨在儿童犯错后引发正确产出的治疗方法，其表达语法方面的改善效果显著优于在错误发生后提供重构的治疗方法。