Effectiveness of Intervention Focused on Pragmatics

Introduction: Conversational skills are the most important pragmatic skills. Among conversational skills, conversational repair and clarification request have important roles in preventing communication failures. Social communication disorder (SCD) involves important defects in pragmatic language skills. Children with SCD constantly encounter communication failures due to defect in pragmatic and communication skills. Thus, presenting interventions focused on these skills is important. The aim of this study was to determine the effectiveness of intervention focused on conversational repair and clarification request in children with SCD. Materials and Methods: This single subject, multiple probe study was conducted on 3 children with social communication disorder. The subjects were selected from among children of 5 to 7 years of age referring to a speech therapy clinic. The children were assessed 3 sessions before and 3 sessions after therapy. They were taught a variety of conversational repair and clarification request strategies during 12 therapy sessions, each lasting 40 minutes. Data were analyzed based on the visual analysis of charts drawn for each child and using improvement rate difference (IRD). Results: Visual analysis of charts and IRD showed that the children improved in conversational repair and clarification request skills (IRD > 91% and IRD > 83%, respectively). After the intervention, subjects could use different conversational repair and clarification request strategies. Conclusion: The efficacy of the intervention focused on conversational repair and clarification request skills in children with SCD was acceptable

The effects of early intervention on the speech of children with cleft palate: A preliminary study

Introduction: Children with cleft palate have limited consonant inventories with compensatory articulation (CA) errors that are considered as the primary concern for this group of children because these errors can affect early language development. Early intervention (EI) is needed to increase normal speech production and to minimize the development of CAs. As there is no study on the effectiveness of EI for children with cleft palate in Iran, this study aimed at examining the impact of an early intervention, which involved focused stimulation method, on the speech of this group of children. Materials and Methods: This clinical trial study with single subject design targeted four children with cleft palate. Their language samples were collected before and after intervention and each time, were transcribed by two independent transcribers to obtain three speech measures, namely, percent consonant correct (PCC), percent of compensatory errors and consonant inventory. All children had compensatory errors in their speech. The intervention method was “focused stimulation” which was taught to the mothers. The mothers practiced this method with their children at home. The second set of language sampling was conducted two months after the first assessment. The inter-rater reliability showed a high correlation between two independent transcriptions in most measures. Results: As results indicated, the percent of correct consonant did not change by the intervention. No significant differences regarding the percent of compensatory errors were found in children before the initiation and after the termination of intervention in spite of some increases. Increase in consonant inventory was approximately significant. Conclusion: Although the changes were not significant after the intervention, children increase their consonant inventory and reduce their compensatory errors following the intervention. The findings of this study indicate that if this study replicated with a larger sample and/or with a longer period of intervention, it might lead to more significant changes. The results indicate that early intervention program in children with cleft palate may lead to improvement of speech and can prevent the establishment of compensatory errors. Keywords: Early intervention, Cleft palate, Speech, Focused stimulatio

A Systematic Review of the Effectiveness of Early Intervention and the Role of Parents in Language Development of Hearing Loss Children

Objectives: Deaf and hard-of-hearing children are slow in language development, and language deficits are common in hearing-impaired children. Here, all areas of the language, including syntax, morphology, phonology, semantic and pragmatic, are involved, and this leads to a deficiency in reading and academic skills. Evidence shows that through early intervention, we can minimize or eliminate problems of children with hearing loss. Early intervention teaches parents how to communicate with their disabled child. Methods: Internet search in databases including ISI Web of Knowledge, Embase and Pubmed from 1990 to 2014 was conducted. Key words such as children with hearing loss, deaf children, hard-of-hearing, family education program(s), early intervention, early detection, family’s approach, parent’s approach, and parent’s education program(s) were searched. Results: A total of 100 articles were initially found, and only 20 articles were finally selected for the study. The inclusion criteria for the study were as follows: the article should be interventional and written in English and should be published between 1990 and 2014. Discussion: Research showed the effectiveness of early intervention in the early development of language and vocabulary. In addition, early detection of hearing loss in the first 6 months of age has a positive impact on children and families interactions and consequently, on language and vocabulary development. The primary focus in the implementation of early intervention services is to reduce the negative effects of risk factors and facilitate optimum development over time. Finally, the combination of early diagnosis and early intervention for children with hearing impairment is necessary