School of Occupational Therapy, Social Work and Speech Pathology, Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia.
Moor House Research and Training Institute, Moor House School & College, Oxted, United Kingdom.
Lang Speech Hear Serv Sch. 2020 Apr 7;51(2):298-316. doi: 10.1044/2019_LSHSS-19-00060. Epub 2020 Mar 27.
Purpose This study evaluated the efficacy of an explicit, combined metalinguistic training and grammar facilitation intervention aimed at improving regular past tense marking for nine children aged 5;10-6;8 (years;months) with developmental language disorder. Method This study used an ABA across-participant multiple-baseline single-case experimental design. Participants were seen one-on-one twice a week for 20- to 30-min sessions for 10 weeks and received explicit grammar intervention combining metalinguistic training using the SHAPE CODING system with grammar facilitation techniques (a systematic cueing hierarchy). In each session, 50 trials to produce the target form were completed, resulting in a total of 1,000 trials over 20 individual therapy sessions. Repeated measures of morphosyntax were collected using probes, including trained past tense verbs, untrained past tense verbs, third-person singular verbs as an extension probe, and possessive as a control probe. Probing contexts included expressive morphosyntax and grammaticality judgment. Outcome measures also included pre-poststandard measures of expressive and receptive grammar. Results Analyses of repeated measures demonstrated significant improvement in past tense production on trained verbs (eight of nine children) and untrained verbs (seven of nine children), indicating efficacy of the treatment. These gains were maintained for 5 weeks. The majority of children made significant improvement on standardized measures of expressive grammar (eight of nine children). Only five of nine children improved on grammaticality judgment or receptive measures. Conclusion Results continue to support the efficacy of explicit grammar interventions to improve past tense marking in early school-aged children. Future research should aim to evaluate the efficacy of similar interventions with group comparison studies and determine whether explicit grammar interventions can improve other aspects of grammatical difficulty for early school-aged children with developmental language disorder. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.11958771.
目的 本研究评估了一种明确的、综合元语言训练和语法促进干预措施的疗效，该措施旨在提高 9 名 5 岁 10 个月至 6 岁 8 个月患有语言发育障碍的儿童正确使用规则过去时标记的能力。
方法 本研究采用 ABA 跨参与者多个基线单案例实验设计。参与者每周接受两次一对一的治疗，每次 20-30 分钟，持续 10 周，接受明确的语法干预，结合使用 SHAPE CODING 系统进行元语言训练和语法促进技术（系统提示层次结构）。在每次治疗中，完成 50 次目标形式的产生任务，总共完成 20 次个体治疗中的 1000 次任务。使用探针收集形态句法的重复测量，包括经过训练的过去时动词、未经训练的过去时动词、第三人称单数动词作为扩展探针以及所有格作为控制探针。探针上下文包括表达形态句法和语法判断。结果测量还包括表达和接受语法的前后标准测量。
结果 重复测量的分析表明，在经过训练的动词（9 名儿童中的 8 名）和未经训练的动词（9 名儿童中的 7 名）上，过去时的产生有显著改善，表明治疗有效。这些收益持续了 5 周。大多数儿童在表达语法的标准化测量中都有显著的提高（9 名儿童中的 8 名）。只有 9 名儿童中的 5 名在语法判断或接受测量方面有提高。
结论 结果继续支持明确的语法干预措施在提高早期学龄儿童过去时标记方面的疗效。未来的研究应旨在通过组间比较研究评估类似干预措施的疗效，并确定明确的语法干预措施是否可以提高早期学龄儿童语言发育障碍的其他语法困难方面。
