title: Intervention for improving comprehension in 4-6 year old children with specific language impairment: practicing inferencing is a good thing.
abstract: Few studies report on therapy to improve language comprehension in children with specific language impairment (SLI). We address this gap by measuring the effect of a systematic intervention to improve inferential comprehension using dialogic reading tasks in conjunction with pre-determined questions and cues. Sixteen children with a diagnosis of SLI aged 4-6 participated in 10 weekly treatment sessions carried out by their regular therapists. Baseline and maintenance periods were also tabulated. Two experimental measures and a standardized test revealed that children's total scores and the quality of their responses post-treatment were better than those obtained pre-treatment. However, perhaps due to the use of non-equivalent probes, this change could not be interpreted solely as a significant effect of intervention. These results nevertheless suggest that a systematically designed intervention focusing on the comprehension of specific types of questions requiring inferencing and using a carefully scaffolded cueing strategy can be beneficial.
authors.affiliation: Département de réadaptation and CIRRIS, Université Laval, Québec, Canada. chantal.desmarais@rea.ulaval.ca
authors.forename: Chantal
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Desmarais
authors.forename: Line
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Nadeau
authors.forename: Natacha
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Trudeau
authors.forename: Paméla
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Filiatrault-Veilleux
authors.forename: Catherine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Maxès-Fournier
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D032882:Comprehension; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D007808:Language Therapy / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D011932:Reading; D012660:Semantics; D013070:Speech Therapy / Q000379:methods*