Psicothema 2020, Vol. 32, No. 4, 541-548 ISSN 0214 - 9915 CODEN PSOTEG Copyright © 2020 Psicothema doi: 10.7334/psicothema2020.160 www.psicothema.com Intervention in Syntactic Skills in Pupils with Developmental Language Disorder Víctor M. Acosta-Rodríguez, Gustavo M. Ramírez-Santana, Sergio Hernández Expósito, and Ángeles Axpe Caballero Universidad de La Laguna Abstract Resumen Background: The main objective of this research has been to verify the Intervención en Habilidades Sintácticas en Alumnos con Trastorno effectiveness of an intervention program on syntactic skills of pupils with del Desarrollo del Lenguaje. Antecedentes: el objetivo principal typical development and with developmental language disorder. Method: de esta investigación ha sido verifi car la efectividad de un programa A total of 99 fi ve-year-old pupils from schools of Tenerife (Spain) de intervención sobre las habilidades sintácticas de los alumnos con participated. The CELF-4 Recalling Sentences, Formulated Sentences, desarrollo típico y con trastorno del desarrollo del lenguaje. Método: and Sentence Structure subtests were used. The intervention program participaron 99 alumnos de cinco años de colegios de Tenerife (España). consisted of 40 sessions implemented by teachers and speech language Se utilizaron los subtests del CELF-4 Recordando oraciones, Formulación therapists. Three levels of practice were organized: in the ordinary de oraciones y Estructura de oraciones. El programa de intervención classroom (large group and small group) and in the support classroom. consistió en 40 sesiones implementadas por profesores y logopedas. Se Results: Pupils diagnosed with developmental language disorder initially organizaron tres niveles de práctica: en el aula ordinaria (grupo grande performed worse on syntax than those with typical development. In y grupo pequeño) y en el aula de apoyo. Resultados: los resultados addition, the goodness of an intervention program was verifi ed especially indicaron que los alumnos diagnosticados con trastorno del desarrollo for Recalling sentences, and, to a lesser extent, for Sentences Structure, del lenguaje presentaron inicialmente un peor rendimiento en la sintaxis which improves in the experimental group with typical development as que aquellos con desarrollo típico. Además, se comprobó la bondad de well as in the control and experimental groups with language development un programa de intervención especialmente en Recordando oraciones, y disorder. Conclusions: A collaborative and inclusive intervention program en menor medida, para Estructura de oraciones, que mejora en el grupo that uses implicit techniques favors the improvement of certain aspects of experimental con desarrollo típico y en los grupos control y experimental the syntactic processing of pupils with developmental language disorder. con trastorno del desarrollo del lenguaje. Conclusiones: un programa de Keywords: Early intervention, developmental language disorder, program intervención de naturaleza colaborativa e inclusiva que recurre a técnicas effects, inclusive classroom. implícitas favorece la mejora de determinados aspectos del procesamiento sintáctico de alumnado con trastorno del desarrollo del lenguaje. Palabras clave: intervención temprana, trastorno del desarrollo del lenguaje, efectos del programa, aula inclusiva. Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) have limitations, as well as less variety in the use of verb forms and many receptive and expressive oral language diffi culties. There is no diffi culties in tasks where they are asked to link a word to a referent obvious reason for these diffi culties, which are likely to carry on with little support (i.e.), link new words that have been learned with into adulthood and have a signifi cant impact on progress at school, familiar or non-familiar referents (Andreu et al., 2013). and in everyday life. These children will always need support to Syntactic defi cits are among the features most frequently used be able to advance in their development and learning (Bishop et in detection and diagnosis. In some cases, they are accompanied al., 2017). by lexico-semantic limitations, while in others, they present The fi rst diffi culties of children with DLD are not syntactic, but phonological (Leonard & Kueser, 2019), pragmatics, or discourse a delay in their fi rst words. Spanish-speaking children show lexical defi cits (Bishop et al., 2017). When pupils with DLD are compared with their typically developing peers, they often show defi cits in sentence production with extremely limited structural length, Received: May 5, 2020 • Accepted: August 6, 2020 reduced complexity, and category errors, producing ungrammatical Corresponding author: Gustavo M. Ramírez-Santana sentences, as well as errors in function words or morphological Facultad de Psicología y Logopedia errors typically involving the omission or substitution of articles, Universidad de La Laguna 38200 La Laguna (Spain) clitic pronouns, prepositions, and link words (Del Valle et al., e-mail: [email protected] 2018; Ramírez et al., 2019). 541 Víctor M. Acosta-Rodríguez, Gustavo M. Ramírez-Santana, Sergio Hernández Expósito, and Ángeles Axpe Caballero Children with DLD fi rst exhibit diffi culties with the accurate Gillam et al., 2012), and subject pronouns he and she, possessive use of syntactic structures in preschool, and these problems -s, past tense -ed (Smith et al., 2013a). may continue throughout primary and secondary school. The Quite beyond the discussion about the strengths and weaknesses consequences of syntactic defi cits for a child’s education can be of each method, there seems to be widespread agreement amongst very serious, because they show diffi culties in order to increase the researchers and professionals about the importance of starting complexity of the linguist context, complex (which requires two syntactic intervention at the right age. Everything seems to or more sentences to be expressed) or narrative, both fundamental indicate that the most positive effects are achieved with pupils to school and social progress (Guo & Schneider, 2016). This is between four and eight years old. It has even been stated that why the general view is that such problems should be identifi ed from nine years of age, the objective is usually to minimize the and addressed as early as possible to prevent future complications. impact of the syntactic defi cit on the disorder, instead of achieving Early intervention to address language defi cits in general, and real progress in syntactic complexity. From this last observation syntactic defi cits in particular, has a preventive effect on specifi c it could be inferred that implicit models are more appropriate for learning diffi culties and also promotes self-esteem and social and early intervention (Fey & Proctor-Williams, 2000). emotional skills. The close relationship between syntactic and Finally, some research has carried out language intervention narrative skills and their connection to reading comprehension has from a system with various levels of support, often called been well studied. For example, it is diffi cult to produce coherent Response to Intervention Model (RTI). So, when teachers apply narratives without using the correct temporal connectors to signal effective instructional practices, the majority of pupils will make the moment in which the events occur or the necessary pronominal the most of it, whereas some other pupils require additional tiers of references to give cohesion to a story and create links between support. There are three tiers of support. The tier 1(T1) or support the characters. Furthermore, these skills are essential for classroom for all pupils; the tier 2 (T2) small group support; and tier 3 (T3) or interaction and social relationships (Norbury & Bishop, 2003). individualized support. Some studies have dealt with whether the Given these preliminary considerations, there is no doubt that RTI approach can improve the language of pupils with language it is important to ensure an effective intervention on the syntax diffi culties in preschool (Greenwood et al., 2019; McConnell et of pupils with DLD. This is even truer considering the paucity al., 2015). of results of previous research in this area, quite unlike what has According to the previous refl ection, it is furthermore understood been observed for other components of language like speech and that an implicit approach due to its fl exible and interactive nature vocabulary (Smith et al., 2013b). could be much better adapted to an organization under a Response Generally speaking, two broad approaches have been to Intervention Model (RTI) (Stanton-Chapman et al., 2016). described for organizing intervention programs on syntax: the Given the above, it has been deemed appropriate to design the implicit approach and the explicit approach (Ebbels, 2014). The current research to study the effects of an intervention program former includes methods for grammatical facilitation based on on syntactic skills using implicit methods in a group of fi ve-year- repeated practice of circumstantial grammar objectives that can old pupils diagnosed with DLD and enrolled in preschool. For this help students identify rules. These methods are generally used in purpose, the following hypotheses were developed: preschool (ages 3-6) and the fi rst years of primary school (ages Hypothesis 1: pupils with DLD will be worse in syntactic skills 6-8). The most representative of these methods are imitation, than the children with typical development. modeling,