Syntactic Intervention for Cantonese-speaking Children With DLD

Trial statusRecruiting
Trial phaseNot applicable
Trial typeInterventional
Biological sexAll
Age5-8
SponsorThe Hong Kong Polytechnic University

About this trial

The goal of this clinical trial is to compare the efficacy of explicit vs. implicit intervention on subject relative clause production in Cantonese-speaking children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). It will also learn about individual difference predictors of intervention outcomes. The main questions it aims to answer are:

1. Will the explicit intervention (Shape Coding+syntactic priming) on relative clause production lead to better outcomes than implicit intervention (syntactic priming only)? 2. Can pre-intervention procedural learning, working memory (WM) capacities, and grammar impairment severity predict the intervention outcomes across children with DLD? 3. Will 10 intervention sessions (500 doses of the target structure) lead to learning progress in children with DLD, even with implicit intervention, and will the progress plateau at some point of the intervention?

Researchers will compare the explicit intervention to the implicit intervention to see if the explicit intervention leads to better interventional outcomes.

Participants will:

* Undergo diagnostic assessments of DLD to confirm their DLD status. * Complete pre-intervention assessments to assess their procedural learning and working memory capacities. * Undergo the intervention phase, which consists of a pretest, 10 intervention sessions, three posttests (after the 1st, 5th and 10th intervention), and a retention test (1 month after the last intervention).

Eligibility criteria

Qualifiers

being Cantonese dominant who learned Cantonese as their first language and attending Cantonese-medium primary schools.

having normal IQ and no hearing impairment.

scoring at least -1.25 SD below the mean in any two subtests of the Hong Kong Cantonese Oral Language Assessment Scale (a standardized language assessment tool for Hong Kong Cantonese-speaking children).

Disqualifiers

Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Trial design

Treatments tested in this trial

  • Explicit intervention (Shape Coding+syntactic priming)
  • Implicit intervention (syntactic priming only)

Treatment groups

32 Participants
are divided into 2 treatment groups