Van Horne Amanda Jean Owen, Fey Marc, Curran Maura
University of Iowa, Iowa City.
University of Kansas, Lawrence.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2017 Sep 18;60(9):2569-2588. doi: 10.1044/2017_JSLHR-L-17-0001.
Complexity-based approaches to treatment have been gaining popularity in domains such as phonology and aphasia but have not yet been tested in child morphological acquisition. In this study, we examined whether beginning treatment with easier-to-inflect (easy first) or harder-to-inflect (hard first) verbs led to greater progress in the production of regular past-tense -ed by children with developmental language disorder.
Eighteen children with developmental language disorder (ages 4-10) participated in a randomized controlled trial (easy first, N = 10, hard first, N = 8). Verbs were selected on the basis of frequency, phonological complexity, and telicity (i.e., the completedness of the event). Progress was measured by the duration of therapy, number of verb lists trained to criterion, and pre/post gains in accuracy for trained and untrained verbs on structured probes.
The hard-first group made greater gains in accuracy on both trained and untrained verbs but did not have fewer therapy visits or train to criterion on more verb lists than the easy-first group. Treatment fidelity, average recasts per session, and verbs learned did not differ across conditions.
When targeting grammatical morphemes, it may be most efficient for clinicians to select harder rather than easier exemplars of the target.
基于复杂性的治疗方法在音韵学和失语症等领域越来越受欢迎，但尚未在儿童形态习得方面进行测试。在本研究中，我们考察了以更容易屈折变化的动词（先易）或更难屈折变化的动词（先难）开始治疗，是否会使发育性语言障碍儿童在规则过去式-ed的产出上取得更大进步。
18名发育性语言障碍儿童（4至10岁）参与了一项随机对照试验（先易组，N = 10；先难组，N = 8）。根据频率、音韵复杂性和情状（即事件的完整性）选择动词。通过治疗时长、训练至标准的动词列表数量，以及结构化探测中训练和未训练动词准确率的前后增益来衡量进展。
先难组在训练和未训练动词的准确率上都有更大提高，但与先易组相比，治疗次数并不更少，训练至标准的动词列表数量也没有更多。治疗依从性、每次会话的平均复述次数以及所学动词在不同条件下并无差异。
当针对语法语素时，临床医生选择更难而非更容易的目标范例可能最为有效。
