Abstract
Background. Language disorder is the most frequent developmental disorder in childhood and it has a significant negative impact on children’s development. The goal of the present review was to systematically analyze the effectiveness of interventions in children with developmental language disorder (DLD) from an evidence-based perspective. Methods. We considered systematic reviews, meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials (RCTs), control group cohort studies on any type of intervention aimed at improving children’s skills in the phono-articulatory, phonological, semantic-lexical, and morpho-syntactic fields in preschool and primary school children (up to eight years of age) that were diagnosed with DLD. We identified 27 full-length studies, 26 RCT and one review. Results. Early intensive intervention in three- and four-year-old children has a positive effect on phonological expressive and receptive skills and acquisitions are maintained in the medium term. Less evidence is available on the treatment of expressive vocabulary (and no evidence on receptive vocabulary). Intervention on morphological and syntactic skills has effective results on expressive (but not receptive) skills; however, a number of inconsistent results have also been reported. Only one study reports a positive effect of treatment on inferential narrative skills. Limited evidence is also available on the treatment of meta-phonological skills. More studies investigated the effectiveness of interventions on general language skills, which now appears as a promising area of investigation, even though results are not all consistent. Conclusions. The effectiveness of interventions over expressive and receptive phonological skills, morpho-syntactic skills, as well as inferential skills in narrative context underscores the importance that these trainings be implemented in children with DLD.
Highlights
Developmental Language DisorderLanguage disorder is the most frequent developmental disorder in childhood [1]; it does not constitute a diagnostic category that refers to a homogeneous condition [2,3]
The results showed that understanding questions was better in children that were receiving a therapy based on the Competing Sources of Input (CSI) hypothesis than in controls
This study shows that even a systematized teaching program conducted in the school setting by teachers can promote a general improvement in communicative language abilities of preschool children with developmental language disorder (DLD), even if such an improvement is not evidenced at a standardized assessment of different areas of language
Summary
Developmental Language DisorderLanguage disorder is the most frequent developmental disorder in childhood [1]; it does not constitute a diagnostic category that refers to a homogeneous condition [2,3]. 11–18% of children aged between 18 and 36 months [7,8,9] present a delay in the appearance of expressive language that, in the most severe cases, can be observed in the receptive domain [10,11,12] in the absence of deafness, intellectual disability, brain injury, and cognitive disorder. Even though many late speakers reach the same level of linguistic development as their peers, in 5–7% of the population the disorder persists after the age of three and a spontaneous recovery of language skills before school age is unlikely In these cases, we speak of developmental language disorder (DLD) [4,6]. Intensive intervention in three- and four-year-old children has a positive effect on phonological expressive and receptive skills and acquisitions are maintained in the medium term
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