Although children with developmental language disorder demonstrate poor inferential comprehension, few studies have evaluated the effect of interventions to improve inferencing. This study aimed to investigate the efficacy of a small-group intervention designed to improve oral inferential comprehension of narrative discourse. Thirty-seven 5- to…

Pre-school education has been greatly expanded in the United Kingdom in the last two decades and further expansion is planned. Its provision allows parents to take up employment thus increasing family incomes and it is expected to narrow the gap between socially disadvantaged children and their peers. The latter is important as studies have shown…

Children with hearing impairment (HI) are at an increased risk of developing speech and language problems similar to those of children with developmental language disorder (DLD), including difficulties with phonology and grammar. This study investigated similarities and differences in phonological and grammatical production between children with…

Word finding difficulties are often seen in children with language difficulties. Their problem is readily observed and has led to investigations of its nature and encouraged attempts at intervention. Semantic errors in their naming suggest that their knowledge of items is poorly developed and that therapies to strengthen it may be effective.…

This study investigates whether extension of a caregiver-led interactive language program may enhance its effectiveness in supporting communication. Caregiver-led language programs, which focus on establishing responsive interaction patterns to support opportunities for communication between caregivers and young children within natural settings,…

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a computer-based executive function (EF) training in children with specific language impairment (SLI). Ten children with SLI, ages 8 to 12 years, completed a 25-session training of visuospatial working memory, inhibition and cognitive flexibility over a 6-week period. Treatment outcome was…

Lexicon Pirate was originally developed as a strategy intervention programme to treat lexical disorders of pre-school children. To evaluate the therapy's effectiveness for school-age students, a randomized controlled trial (RCT, N = 157) was conducted. Based on a pre--post-test design, the programme's impacts were compared with a control group…

Children with delayed language skills, who were from a socio-economic area defined as disadvantaged, made significant improvements in language skills after their parents were trained in easily learned strategies, enabling them to make simple changes in the way they interacted with their children. The 36 children, mean age five years, were…

The reading skills of many deaf children lag several years behind those of hearing children, and there is a need for identifying reading difficulties and implementing effective reading support strategies in this population. This study embraces a balanced reading approach, and investigates the efficacy of applying multi-sensory coding strategies…

This pilot study examined the feasibility of a home-school partnership for improving emergent literacy skills in Spanish-speaking pre-school children of migrant farmworkers. Parents were requested to send labeled drawings of family activities to their children's classroom for supplementing bilingual language and literacy instruction. Participants…

Ten children (aged between 7;11 and 9;2) with mixed reading disability participated in an oral narrative intervention programme that focused on enhancing children's story structure knowledge. The participants had all demonstrated persistent reading and oral narrative comprehension and production difficulties in a two-year longitudinal study prior…

The research reported investigated the efficacy of intervention, developed by a speech-language therapist and implemented by a teacher, for the language and phonological awareness (PA) abilities of pre-school, socially disadvantaged children. One study established that children from low socio-economic (SES) backgrounds had poorer skills on both…