Item – Theses Canada

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OCLC number
610558011
Link(s) to full text
LAC copy
LAC copy
Author
Washington, Karla N.(Karla Nadine),1976-
Title
Exploring the impact of two direct treatment programs for the remediation of expressive grammar deficits in preschool and kindergarten children with specific language impairment.
Degree
Ph. D. -- University of Western Ontario, 2007
Publisher
Ottawa : Library and Archives Canada = Bibliothèque et Archives Canada, [2008]
Description
3 microfiches
Notes
Includes bibliographical references.
Abstract
This small sample research study explored the outcomes of three different types of treatment designed to enhance expressive grammar in children with ' specific language impairment' ('SLI'). Twenty-three, 3 to 4 year old children with 'SLI' characterized by moderate to severe expressive grammar difficulties served as participants in a 10-week intervention study. All participants were assessed using a variety of standardized testing tools of language including analysis of spontaneous language samples that were obtained in play with an adult. Using the 'consecutive sampling ' method of 'convenience sampling', participants were consecutively assigned to one of two direct treatment types, 'Conventional Language Treatment' ('CLT'), Treatment 1 (n=7), or ' Computer-Assisted Treatment C-AT', Treatment 2 (n=7). A convenience sample of children receiving general facilitation techniques at home while awaiting treatment served as another comparison group, no direct treatment ('NDT')--Treatment 3 (n=9). The general design used was a pre-to-post assessment with an intervening 10-week treatment program, followed by a 3-month post-treatment assessment. Language skills were assessed at each time point. Because previous research has suggested that direct targeting of expressive grammar skills can facilitate increased social and emergent literacy skills, these two skill areas were evaluated at each time point. The influence of nonverbal IQ and initial language severity in predicting language gains post-intervention also was investigated. Results showed that direct treatment participants significantly outperformed participants receiving 'NDT' on all evaluative measures. No statistically significant differences were observed between the two direct treatments. However, examination of effect sizes showed that 'C-AT ' had a smaller unexplained variance for all language measures compared to 'CLT'. Participants' social and emergent literacy skills significantly increased over the course of the treatment program showing that direct targeting of expressive language skills can facilitate gains in these two skill areas. Further, both nonverbal IQ and initial language severity had significant and different predictive ability of language gains with treatment. Keywords: specific language impairment, expressive grammatical deficits, conventional language treatment, computer-assisted treatment, treatment effectiveness, treatment efficiency, generalization, social skills, emergent literacy skills, predictor variables, nonverbal IQ, initial language severity.
ISBN
9780494367575
0494367571