[Inpatient language therapy in children with severe specific language impairments]

The present retrospective evaluation study examined treatment efficacy in preschool children with severe specific language impairments. Besides the efficacy of 2 inpatient treatment conditions, differing in periods and intensity of parent advice, will be compared.

106 children (mean age: 72.1; SD 9.1 months) received 6 weeks of treatment with a traditional therapy en bloc (EB) and 78 children (mean age: 72.3; SD 10.4 months) with a new therapy in 3 intervals (I) respectively. Receptive language abilities, expressive vocabulary size and nonword repetition were utilized as language measures at the beginning and end of treatment.

In both treatment conditions, the children, on average, made significant gains in the outcome measures (p<0.0001). En bloc-like interval therapy yielded big effects in receptive language abilities (EB: d=0.89; 95%-CI: 0.72-1.05 vs. I: d=0.95; 95%-CI: 0.71-1.19). Medium effect sizes (EB: d=0.60; 95%-CI: 0.48-0.72; I: d=0.79; 95%-CI: 0.61-0.98) resulted in expressive vocabulary, but rather minor ones in phonological processing (EB: d=0.37; 95%-CI: 0.22-0.52; I: d=0.48; 95%-CI: 0.28-0.67). No significant post-intervention difference between the therapy modes was only observed in receptive language (95%-CI of the difference at the end of treatment: -1.85-5.17).

An intensive multidisciplinary approach with preschool children is justified when the children suffer from severe deficits in language comprehension and expressive vocabulary even after sufficient outpatient treatment.