Individual Versus Small Group Treatment of Morphological Errors for Children With Developmental Language Disorder

Area of Science:

• Speech-Language Pathology
• Developmental Psychology
• Linguistics

Background:

• Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) affects language acquisition in young children.
• Morphological errors are common in children with DLD.
• Conversational recast is a common intervention strategy.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate enhanced conversational recast for treating morphological errors in preschoolers with DLD.
• To compare the effectiveness of individual versus group treatment settings.
• To investigate the benefit of exposure to a partner's treatment target.

Main Methods:

• Twenty preschoolers with DLD were assigned to individual or group treatment.
• Treatment focused on one target morpheme over approximately 5 weeks.
• Pre- and post-treatment probes assessed morpheme usage.

Main Results:

• Significant improvements were found for directly targeted morphemes in both settings.
• No significant differences were observed between individual and group treatments.
• Group-treated children did not improve on their partner's target morpheme.

Conclusions:

• Enhanced conversational recast is effective in group settings for DLD.
• Directly targeting morphemes is crucial for treatment gains.
• Exposure to a partner's target does not enhance learning in this context.