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，这使他们 面临学业不及格的风险。我们的长期目标是开发一种有效的单词学习疗法 对患有SLI的幼儿园儿童进行培训，从而提高他们的学业和职业成绩。在上一次 在资助期间，我们成功地通过互动读书向SLI儿童传授新单词，这是一种治疗方法 让成年人给孩子读一本故事书，并偏离课文教新单词。我们确认了 治疗的适当强度，并表明SLI儿童可以学习适当数量的 到治疗结束时的话。然而，这种对短期词汇学习的成功支持揭示了新的 在这次更新中必须克服的挑战，以继续理解和改进长期单词 系统性红斑狼疮儿童的学习。因此，第二次初步临床试验涉及60名患有 SLI是在这次续签中提出的。目标1解决了新学的单词一旦被遗忘这一挑战 治疗被撤回。我们试图通过比较不同数量的测试来缓冲遗忘 互动式阅读(低、中、高测试)。将测试纳入培训是一种行之有效的做法 以及高度可复制的减少成年人和发育中儿童健忘的方法。目标1将 确定是否可以利用测试来缓冲SLI儿童在现实世界中的遗忘 条件。目标2和目标3解决的挑战是，并非所有儿童都能从互动图书中平等受益 阅读。在目标2中，我们确定系统性红斑狼疮儿童的治疗前特征与 治疗期间学习的斜率或治疗后遗忘的斜率。此外，我们还选择了一个预选的 治疗电池，对可能与学习相关的广泛技能进行采样(语言处理， 工作记忆和情景记忆)或遗忘(最后处理时的学习，衰减率)。AIM 2将提供 预测哪些儿童将从交互式阅读中受益，并确定哪些技能 是SLI儿童长期学习单词的主要障碍。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(学习者与非学习者)和治疗后监测结束时(记住者与非学习者)。 健忘者)，然后检查早期的表现，以确定治疗和治疗后的结果 是可以预见的。这为进展产生了基于经验的基准，以后可以用来定制 它可以为个别儿童提供治疗，并随着时间的推移建立学习和遗忘的稳定性。总体而言，这 研究提出了一种有前景的治疗方法，可以有效地克服重大的单词学习挑战 面对SLI儿童，揭示学习和遗忘对语言正常化的贡献 患有SLI的儿童。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，缓冲遗忘。因此，所获得的知识将进一步催化临床研究。

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 Aim 1 addresses the challenge that newly learned words were forgotten once treatment was withdrawn.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.