Interactive book reading to accelerate word learning by children with SLI

描述(由申请人提供)：众所周知，患有特定语言障碍(SLI)的儿童在学习新单词方面存在困难，这将使他们未来面临更大的阅读障碍和学业失败的风险。令人惊讶的是，很少有SLI儿童的单词学习干预措施经过严格的有效性和/或有效性测试。拟议研究的长期目标是优化干预措施，对SLI儿童的其他人群的单词学习产生中到大的影响。兴趣的干预是互动阅读，成人用口头朗读给孩子听，作为教授新单词的基础。迈向长期目标的第一步是这项I/II期初步临床试验，它被定义为一项初步研究，旨在解决未来进行III/IV期最终临床试验所需的核心设计和临床问题，进而确定干预的有效性/有效性。AIM 1使用第一阶段升级策略来磨练SLI儿童互动阅读的适当治疗强度。测试的强度来自于实证单词学习研究，研究表明，SLI儿童学习新单词所需的暴露时间是其正常发育同龄人的两到三倍。目的2从近端(即学习所教单词)和远端结果衡量(即超越所教单词的学习)以及根据基于治疗前语言技能的治疗反应的差异来审查与适当的治疗强度相关的受益程度。目标3是基于这样一种想法，即有不同的方法可以实现相同的治疗强度。对于交互式阅读，强度是一个函数 在一本书中接触目标词的次数(即剂量)和通过重复阅读一本书而接触到目标词的次数(即剂量频率)。来自实验研究和理论的有力证据表明，即使在总体强度相等的情况下，最大化剂量频率的养生法也会比最大化剂量的养生法产生更好的单词学习效果。目的3确定SLI儿童词汇学习的最佳剂量和剂量频率组合。这项研究可能产生的影响是，将为SLI儿童确定一种足够的强度和有希望的互动阅读剂量方案，对于他们来说，几乎没有(如果有的话)被证明有效的单词学习方法。此外，还将确定通过控制强度和剂量方案可以获得的结果的类型，确定是否需要进一步优化治疗，以应对SLI儿童面临的重大单词学习挑战。最后，研究结果将有助于关于支持学习所需样本数量的理论，以及从输入中学习与记忆巩固的理论。具体地说，这项工作通过提供SLI儿童在几个月内学习大量单词的证据，补充了通常发育儿童在几周内学习少量单词的先前数据，从而突破了这些理论的极限。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) are known to have difficulty learning new words, which places them at greater risk for future reading impairments and academic failure. Surprisingly, there are few interventions for word learning by children with SLI that have undergone rigorous efficacy and/or effectiveness testing. The long-term goal of proposed research is to optimize an intervention with moderate to large effects on word learning by other populations of children for children with SLI. The intervention of interest is interactive book reading, where an adult uses oral reading to a child as a foundation for teaching new words. The first step towards the long-term goal is this Phase I/II Preliminary Clinical Trial, which is defined as a preliminary study addressing core design and clinical issues necessary to the future conduct of a Phase III/IV Definitive Clinical Trial that, in turn, establises the efficacy/effectiveness of the intervention. Aim 1 uses a Phase I escalation strategy to hone in on an adequate treatment intensity of interactive book reading for children with SLI. The intensities to be tested are informed by empirical word learning studies showing that children with SLI need two to three times as many exposures as their typically developing peers to learn new words. Aim 2 examines the extent of benefit associated with the adequate treatment intensity in terms of both proximal (i.e., learning the taught words) and distal outcome measures (i.e., learning beyond the taught words) and in terms of the variation in response to treatment based on pre-treatment language skills. Aim 3 is based on the idea that there are different ways of achieving the same treatment intensity. For interactive book reading, intensity is a function of the number of exposures to target words within a book (i.e., dose) and the number of exposures to target words via repeated readings of a book (i.e., dose frequency). There is strong evidence from experimental studies and theory suggesting that a regimen that maximizes dose frequency will yield better word learning outcomes than a regimen that maximizes dose, even when the overall intensity is equivalent. Aim 3 will identify the best combination of dose and dose frequency for word learning by children with SLI. The likely impact of this research is that an adequate intensity and promising dosing regimen of interactive book reading will be identified for children with SLI, for whom there are few (if any) proven treatments for word learning. Moreover, the types of outcomes that can be attained through manipulation of intensity and dosing regimen will be identified, determining whether further optimization of the treatment is needed to meet the significant word learning challenges faced by children with SLI. Lastly, the resulting findings will contribute to theories concerning the number of exemplars needed to support learning as well as theories of learning from input versus memory consolidation. Specifically, the work pushes the limits of these theories by providing evidence from children with SLI learning large numbers of words over several months, supplementing prior data from typically developing children learning small numbers of words over a few weeks.