1. Efficacy, Model of Delivery, Intensity and Targets of Pragmatic Interventions for Children with Developmental Language Disorder: A Systematic Review
- Author
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Jensen de López, Kristine M., Kraljevic, Jelena Kuvac, and Struntze, Emilie L. Bang
- Abstract
Background: It is widely acknowledged that children with developmental language disorder (DLD) predominantly have difficulties in the areas of grammar and vocabulary, with preserved pragmatic skills. Consequently, few studies focus on the pragmatic skills of children with DLD, and there is a distinct lack of studies examining the effectiveness of pragmatic interventions. Aims: To carry out a systematic review of the literature on pragmatic interventions for children with DLD. Methods & Procedures: This systematic review was registered with PROSPERO (ID = CRD42017067239). A systematic search in seven databases yielded 1031 papers, of which 11 met our inclusion criteria. The included papers focused on interventions for children with DLD (mean = 3-18 years), enhancing oral language pragmatic skills, published between January 2006 and May 2020, and were based on a group-study design such as randomized control trial or pre-post-testing. Study participants were monolingual speakers. The quality of papers was appraised using the Cochrane Risk of bias tool for randomized controlled trials. Outcomes & Results: There was a high degree of variability between the included intervention studies, especially regarding intensity, intervention targets and outcomes. The evidence suggested that pragmatic intervention is feasible for all models of delivery (individual, small and large group) and that interventions for pragmatic language are mostly focused on encouragement of conversation and narrative skills observed through parent-child interaction or shared book-reading activities. Conclusions & Implications: This study highlights the importance of promoting and explicitly teaching pragmatic skills to children with DLD in structured interventions. A narrative synthesis of the included studies revealed that in addition to direct intervention, indirect intervention can also contribute to improving oral pragmatic skills of children with DLD.
- Published
- 2022
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