Background: Early intervention is recommended for pre-school children with low language. However, few robustly evaluated language interventions for young children exist. Furthermore, in many interventions the theoretical underpinnings are underspecified and the 'active ingredients' of the interventions not tested. This paper presents a…

Background: Children's language abilities set the stage for their education, psychosocial development and life chances across the life course. Aims: To compare the efficacy of two preschool language interventions delivered with low dosages in early years settings (EYS): Building Early Sentences Therapy (BEST) and an Adapted Derbyshire Language…

Background: Identifying 3-4-year-olds who are most at risk of persisting language difficulties, and possibly specific language impairment (SLI), is difficult due to the natural variation of language in young children. In older children, markers for SLI have been identified that differentiate between children with and without SLI. It is not known…

Background: Sentence imitation has been identified as a good indicator of children's language skills, with performance differentiating children with specific language impairment and showing relationships with other language measures. It has a number of advantages over other methods of assessment. The assessment of morphosyntax in children who have…

Background: Narratives have been used by a number of researchers to investigate the language of children with specific language impairment (SLI). While a number of explanations for SLI have been proposed, there is now mounting evidence that children with SLI have limited memory resources. Phonological memory has been the focus of the research on…

Background: Children with specific language impairment experience story comprehension deficits. Research with typically developing children, poor comprehenders and poor readers has shown that the use of mental imagery aids in the comprehension of stories. Aims: To evaluate the effectiveness of an intervention program in the use of mental imagery…