Interactive book reading to accelerate word learning by children with SLI

有特殊语言障碍（SLI）的儿童学习新单词的速度比同龄人慢， 面临学业失败的风险。我们的长期目标是开发一种有效的单词学习治疗方法， 幼儿园的SLI儿童，从而提高他们的学术和职业成果。前一 在资助期内，我们通过互动式阅读，成功地向SLI儿童教授了新单词， 涉及成年人给孩子阅读故事书，并偏离文本来教授新单词。我们确定 适当的治疗强度，并表明SLI儿童可以学习适当数量的 在治疗结束时说。然而，这种短期单词学习的成功支持揭示了新的 在这一更新中必须克服的挑战，以继续理解和改善长期的世界 学习SLI的孩子。因此，第二个初步临床试验涉及60名幼儿园儿童， SLI是在这次更新中提出的。目标1解决了新学的单词被遗忘一次的挑战 停止治疗。我们试图通过比较不同的测试量来缓冲遗忘， 互动式阅读（低、中、高测试）。将测试转化为培训是一个公认的 并且可以高度复制的方法来减少成年人和发育中的儿童的遗忘。目标1将 确定是否可以利用测试来缓冲真实的世界下SLI儿童的遗忘 条件目标2和3解决了并非所有儿童都能从互动图书中平等受益的挑战 阅读。在目标2中，我们确定了SLI儿童的治疗前特征，这些特征与以下因素相关： 治疗期间的学习斜率或治疗后的遗忘斜率。此外，我们选择了一个预- 对可能与学习相关的大量技能进行采样的处理组（语言处理， 工作记忆和情景记忆）或遗忘（最后一次治疗时的学习，衰减率）。目标2将提供 预测哪些孩子将从互动式阅读中受益，并确定哪些技能 是SLI儿童长期单词学习的主要障碍。在目标3中，我们对每个孩子的反应进行分类， 在治疗结束时（学习者vs.非学习者）和治疗后监测结束时（记忆者vs. forgetter），然后检查早期表现，以确定治疗和治疗后结果 可以预测。这产生了基于经验的进展基准，以后可以用来调整 这是一种针对个别儿童的治疗方法，并随着时间的推移建立学习和遗忘的稳定性。总体而言，这 研究提出了一种有希望的治疗方法，可以有效地克服单词学习的重大挑战。 研究了SLI儿童所面临的问题，揭示了学习和遗忘对语言正常化的贡献， SLI患儿这些结果的影响将超越单词学习和SLI，因为所有的治疗都需要 促进学习和缓冲遗忘。因此，所获得的知识将进一步促进临床研究。

Children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) are slower to learn new words than their peers, placing them at risk for academic failure. Our long-term goal is to develop an effective word learning treatment for kindergarten children with SLI, thereby improving their academic and vocational outcomes. During the prior funding period, we successfully taught new words to children with SLI via interactive book reading, a treatment involving an adult reading a storybook to a child and deviating from the text to teach new words. We identified the appropriate intensity of the treatment and showed that children with SLI can learn an appropriate number of words by the end of treatment. However, this successful support of short-term word learning revealed new challenges that must be overcome in this renewal to continue to understand and improve long-term word learning by children with SLI. Thus, a second preliminary clinical trial involving 60 kindergarten children with SLI is proposed in this renewal. Aim 1 addresses the challenge that newly learned words were forgotten once treatment was withdrawn. We attempt to buffer forgetting by comparing different amounts of testing during interactive book reading (low vs. mid vs high testing). Incorporating testing into training is a well-established and highly replicated means of reducing forgetting by adults and typically developing children. Aim 1 will determine whether testing can be harnessed to buffer forgetting by children with SLI under real world conditions. Aims 2 and 3 address the challenge that not all children benefitted equally from interactive book reading. In Aim 2, we identify pre-treatment characteristics of children with SLI that are associated with the slope of learning during treatment or the slope of forgetting post-treatment. Moreover, we select a pre- treatment battery that samples a wide array of skills likely to be associated with learning (language processing, working memory, and episodic memory) or forgetting (learning at last treatment, decay rate). Aim 2 will provide a foundation for predicting which children will benefit from interactive book reading and will identify which skills are major barriers to long-term word learning by children with SLI. In Aim 3, we classify each child’s response at the end of treatment (learner vs. non-learner) and at the end of post-treatment monitoring (rememberer vs. forgetter) and then examine earlier performance to determine when treatment and post-treatment outcomes can be predicted. This yields empirically based benchmarks for progress that can be used later to tailor the treatment to individual children and establishes the stability of learning and forgetting over time. Overall, this research advances a promising treatment to effectively overcome the significant word learning challenges faced by children with SLI and reveals the contribution of learning and forgetting to language normalization by children with SLI. The results will have impact beyond word learning and SLI because all treatments require boosting learning and buffering forgetting. Thus, the knowledge gained will further catalyze clinical research.