Promoting school readiness in children at risk through language interventions: an exploration of how and why child, family and social factors influenc

大约8%的儿童进入正规学校，但语言发展较差，在社会不利领域，这一比例要高得多。这些儿童在心理健康、教育和就业方面长期效果不佳的风险增加。有效的语言干预手段越来越多。因此，为高危儿童提供语言干预以促进他们的“入学准备”似乎是合乎逻辑的。然而，许多研究表明，社会和儿童因素使儿童面临语言不佳的风险，也可能使他们面临对干预措施反应较差的风险。目前，我们还不完全了解这些因素是如何以及为什么影响不同干预反应的。因此，很难确定应如何构建干预措施以弥补潜在的组合风险、哪些风险可能是最重要的应对措施，以及某些风险是否可能比其他风险更容易应对。本研究通过三个阶段的方法来解决这些问题：(1)干预研究的元分析综述；(2)使用结构方程模型对人群队列数据进行分析；(3)完成一系列干预案例研究。通过这种方式，它将解决以下研究问题：1.哪些儿童、家庭和社会因素与对语言干预的不同反应有关？2.学前语言技能在多大程度上调节早期预测因素与上学准备之间的关系，是否有任何因素调节这种关系？3.如何将这些因素的知识整合到干预设计中以提高其有效性？

Around 8% of children enter formal schooling with poor language development and a substantially higher proportion does so in areas of social disadvantage. These children are at increased risk of poor long-term outcomes in mental health, education and employment. There are a growing number of effective language interventions. It would therefore appear logical to provide language interventions to children at-risk to promote their 'school readiness'. However, a number of studies suggest that the social and child factors that put a child at risk of poor language may also put them at risk of a poorer response to interventions. Currently we do not fully understand how and why these factors influence differential intervention response. It is therefore difficult to determine how interventions should be constructed to compensate for potentially combined risks, which risks may be the most important to address, and whether some risks may be more readily addressed than others. This study addresses these issue through a three stage methodology: (1) a meta-analytical review of intervention studies; 2), analysis of population cohort data using structural equation modelling; 3) completion of a series of intervention case studies. In this way it will address the following research questions: 1. Which child, family and social factors are associated with differential responses to language interventions? 2. To what extent do pre-school language skills mediate the relationship between early predictors and school readiness and do any factors moderate this relationship? 3. How might knowledge of these factors be integrated into intervention design to increase its efficacy?