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Aims: This study compared two dose frequency conditions of an explicit intervention with 50 trials per session designed to improve past tense marking in early school‐aged children with developmental language disorder (DLD). The influence of allomorphs on intervention effects was also examined. Methods: Data from previously conducted intervention studies were combined and analysed. Participants included nine children (mean age = 6;5 years) who received 20–30‐min intervention sessions provided twice per week for 10 weeks (1000 trials; 400–600 min) and 20 children (mean age = 6;6) who received 20–30‐min intervention sessions provided once per week for 10 weeks (500 trials; 200–300 min). Repeated measures included criterion‐referenced probes for production of untrained past tense verbs collected throughout baseline, intervention, and maintenance phases. The rate of progress in each phase was analysed using logistic regression. The proportion of participants who produced past tense allomorphs correctly at pre‐intervention, post‐intervention, and maintenance testing points was analysed. Results: Logistic regression showed a stable baseline, highly significant progress during the intervention phase, and a marginally significant shallow decline during the maintenance phase. Those in the twice per week group showed a greater rate of progress during the intervention phase leading to significantly higher scores in the maintenance period when compared with the once per week group. The allomorphic category of past tense verbs did not appear to influence outcomes. Conclusions: Participants receiving intervention twice per week appeared to demonstrate a greater rate of progress with intervention than those receiving it once per week, although once per week was also effective. However, these results should be interpreted with caution. Limitations to study design indicate that a larger randomised controlled trial is required. All past tense allomorphs improve to a similar degree when treated with this intervention. What this paper adds: What is already known on the subject: Understanding the parameters of dosage and intensity are important for clinical practice.Research evaluating the efficacy and/or effectiveness of interventions delivered in different dose/intensity conditions is scarce.There appears to be different interpretations of what constitutes dosage and intensity in published research. What this paper adds to existing knowledge: This study retrospectively compared dosage and intensity conditions of intervention provided twice per week to intervention provided once per week. Both dose frequencies could be delivered in clinical settings.Results from this study were analysed by grouping data from multiple testing points, rather than comparing pre‐post results. This approach demonstrated the variability of individual performance that would otherwise be lost with conventional methods of analysis.This study demonstrated that all past tense allomorphs improve to a similar degree when treated with this intervention. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work?: Parameters of dosage and intensity are still not clearly defined well enough for translation to clinical practice. In consideration of current research, this intervention may be more effective if delivered twice per week.If clinicians are treating past tense, all allomorphs should be considered as priorities for intervention targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) demonstrate poor oral inferential comprehension. Research investigating the skills that underpin oral inferential comprehension in young children with DLD is necessary in order to better understand and improve inferential comprehension in this population. Aims: To profile the language and cognitive skills that contribute to oral inferential comprehension in young children with DLD. Methods & Procedures: Seventy‐six children aged 5–6 years with a diagnosis of DLD were assessed on a wide range of language and cognitive measures. Oral inferential comprehension of narrative was the primary outcome measure. Outcomes & Results: Narrative macrostructure and microstructure, literal comprehension, vocabulary, phonological loop, and theory of mind were significant predictors of inferential comprehension in bivariate analyses. However, multivariate regression analysis indicated that only narrative retell macrostructure and theory of mind contributed a significant amount of unique variance to inferential comprehension. Conclusions & Implications: This study profiled the skills contributing to oral inferential comprehension in young children with DLD, to support the clinical and theoretical understanding of the ability in this population. The findings have implications for future intervention studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Given the integral role that verbs play in sentence production, understanding verb deficits is critical to clinical practice. Difficulties in sentence production are often directly related to an inability to retrieve argument structure information which, according to most theoretical accounts, is specified at a lexical level as part of the semantic representation of the verb. The presence of an argument complexity effect when retrieving verbs in isolation, i.e. increased difficulty with increasing number of arguments required by the verb, is considered evidence of the integral link between verbs and the ensuing structure. Recent reports, however, of relatively intact verb retrieval and impaired argument structure suggest that difficulties with verbs and argument structure may not always co-occur. One explanation for this is that lexical-syntactic information may be stored separately to lexical-semantic information at the lemma level and then differentially impaired. Aims To determine whether the presence of difficulties creating argument structure in a group of people with aphasia with verb-retrieval deficits consistently aligned with the underlying nature of their impairment, where semantic involvement resulted in argument structure difficulties and post-semantic impairment resulted in intact argument structure. This would provide evidence either to support or to challenge the view that argument structure is lexically specified. The presence of an argument complexity effect within the participants' single verb naming was also investigated to examine the relationship between verb argument information and any subsequent difficulties creating argument structure for sentence production. Methods & Procedures Verb retrieval and argument structure production were investigated in 12 people with aphasia with verb-retrieval deficits on single-word and sentence-production measures. Outcomes & Results Eight of the 12 participants presented with a semantic verb deficit (five semantic and three mixed semantic and phonological) and had difficulties in creating argument structure. Four participants presented with a phonological verb deficit. Of these, two had intact argument structure while two had impaired argument structure. An argument complexity effect in verb naming was seen in both groups. Conclusions & Implications Semantic verb-retrieval deficits consistently resulted in argument structure production difficulties, supporting the view that syntactic information is stored within the lemma. The presence of argument structure difficulties in two participants with phonological deficits; however, lends support for the separate coding of lexical-syntactic from lexical-semantic information at the lemma level, a factor that has both theoretical and clinical implications with respect to diagnosis and management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Children with specific language impairment (SLI) often experience word-learning difficulties, which are suggested to originate in the early stage of word learning: fast mapping. Some previous research indicates significantly poorer fast mapping capabilities in children with SLI compared with typically developing (TD) counterparts, with a range of methodological factors impacting on the consistency of this finding. Research has explored key issues that might underlie fast mapping difficulties in children with SLI, with strong theoretical support but little empirical evidence for the role of phonological short-term memory (STM). Additionally, further research is required to explore the influence of receptive vocabulary on fast mapping capabilities. Understanding the factors associated with fast mapping difficulties that are experienced by children with SLI may lead to greater theoretically driven word-learning intervention. Aims To investigate whether children with SLI demonstrate significant difficulties with fast mapping, and to explore the related factors. It was hypothesized that children with SLI would score significantly lower on a fast mapping production task compared with TD children, and that phonological STM and receptive vocabulary would significantly predict fast mapping production scores in both groups of children. Methods & Procedures Twenty-three children with SLI (mean = 64.39 months, SD = 4.10 months) and 26 TD children (mean = 65.92 months, SD = 2.98) were recruited from specialist language and mainstream schools. All participants took part in a unique, interactive fast-mapping task whereby nine novel objects with non-word labels were presented and production accuracy was assessed. A non-word repetition test and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Fourth Edition (PPVT-IV) were also administered as measures of phonological STM capacity and receptive vocabulary, respectively. Outcomes & Results Results of the fast-mapping task indicated that children with SLI had significantly poorer fast mapping production scores than TD children. Scores from the non-word repetition task were also significantly lower for the SLI group, revealing reduced phonological STM capacity. Phonological STM capacity and receptive vocabulary emerged as significant predictors of fast mapping performance when the group data were combined in a multiple regression analysis. Conclusions & Implications These results suggest that the word-learning difficulties experienced by children with SLI may originate at the fast mapping stage, and that phonological STM and receptive vocabulary significantly predict fast mapping ability. These findings contribute to the theoretical understanding of word-learning difficulties in children with SLI and may inform lexical learning intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]