The Relationship Between Child Language Proficiency and Language of Treatment on the Outcomes of Bilingual Children with Developmental Language Disorder

Recruiting now · Not applicable

Conditions studied: Developmental Language Disorder, Language Impairment

In brief

Of the 12 million children in the USA growing up bilingual, about 1 million experience Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), a disorder in language learning and use. Currently there is no guidance for speech language pathologists (SLPs) as to the language of intervention for bilingual children with DLD with differing degrees of proficiency with English or Spanish. This project will examine the relationship between relative language proficiency and the language of intervention, considering monolingual intervention in English and Spanish and bilingual intervention presented by alternating English and Spanish treatment sessions with the goal of improving language outcomes and thereby strengthening long-term academic achievement.

Key facts

Study ID

NCT06085300

Run by

University of Houston

People needed

120

Starts

2023-08-08

Expected to finish

2028-05-01

Last updated by the study team

2025-01-14

Who can join

Age: 4 and older, up to 6. Sex: any. Healthy volunteers: accepted.

You may qualify if…

• parent concerns and/or a history of receiving services in the public schools
• age-specific cutoffs for the morphosyntax subtests for their best language (English or Spanish) on the Bilingual English Spanish Assessment. The cut-off score for best language for 4-year-olds is 84, for 5-year-olds is 85, and for 6-year-olds is 81. Using the best-language approach, these scores have a sensitivity over 90% and specificity over 80% for children between 4;0 and 6;11 years of age , which is considered acceptable for studies of diagnostic accuracy.
• nonverbal IQ, as measured by the Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test-2, matrices subtest, will be at or above a standard score of 70.
• pass a hearing screening test
• participants must be bilingual, that is children must be producing at least simple sentences in spontaneous speech in both Spanish and English, or understand English and Spanish.
• participants must be able to benefit from treatment for both conditional adverbial clauses and complement clauses, as evidenced by accuracy below 40% on 10-item elicited production probes in both languages

You may not qualify if…

• 1) children with significant sensory-motor concerns or psychiatric disorders per parent report will not be enrolled.

Where it is running

• School Districst — Houston, Texas, United States (enrolling)

Full record on ClinicalTrials.gov

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