Clinical Trial: Efficacy of AMALS in Treating Language Impairment in Children
Study Status: Completed
Recruit Status: Completed
Study Type: Interventional
Official Title: AMALS: Addressing Multiple Aspects of Language Simultaneously: A Randomized Clinical Trial
Brief Summary:
The goal of this proposal is to examine the efficacy of a manualized treatment intervention, AMALS: Addressing Multiple Aspects of Language Simultaneously, which is designed to remediate semantic, morphological, and syntactic aspects of language in preschool children with language impairment. This study will target preschool children with language impairment living in a region characterized by nonmainstream dialects.
Questions driving this work are:
- Will children participating in the AMALS treatment exhibit greater semantic, morphological, and syntactic complexity on multiple outcome measures at the completion of the intervention compared to a Discrete Trial Approach (DTA) group?
- Will these gains be maintained at one-month follow up?
- What is the impact of dialect on dependent variables, specifically morphosyntactic abilities?
To answer these questions a randomized clinical trial will be conducted comparing AMALS, an integrated approach to treatment, with DTA, an additive approach to therapy. In this study rather than restrict the ethnic and cultural backgrounds of this population, children's use of dialect will be uniquely identified and examined.
Detailed Summary:
Sponsor: Lamar University
Current Primary Outcome:
- Language Sample Analysis [ Time Frame: Language samples were obtained pre-treatment, post-treatment, and at one-month follow-up. ]Samples were transcribed and segmented by utterance. Each was coded categorically. Reported measures include percentage of utterances at the interpretive/inferential label, percentage of utterances with one or more t-unit (i.e., noun phrase + verb phrase), percentage of utterances that required copula (is/are) or auxiliary (is/are) that were produced.
- Number of Verb Structures Per Utterance [ Time Frame: Pre-treatment, post-treatment, 1-month follow-up ]Samples were transcribed and segmented by utterance. Utterances were analyzed for novel verb structures. Structures were included if they were produced more than one time.
Original Primary Outcome: Language [ Time Frame: Pre-intervention, post-intervention, one-month follow-up ]
Current Secondary Outcome:
Original Secondary Outcome:
Information By: Lamar University
Dates:
Date Received: February 9, 2009
Date Started: January 2009
Date Completion:
Last Updated: May 14, 2012
Last Verified: May 2012
