For many reasons, young children with disabilities have difficulty learning to talk. This project focuses on the role of language intervention in communication development of young children who are not talking.

There are three phases in the study: pre-intervention, intervention, and post-intervention. During the pre-intervention phase, the participating children will be given an assessment battery that includes descriptive, cognitive, communicative, and family measures. In the intervention phase, the children will be randomly assigned to one of the three interventions to determine the effects of two different types of experimental language interventions versus an established oral communication intervention. In each intervention, the child and parent will participate in two 30-minute sessions per week across a 12-week period. Nine of the 12 weeks of intervention will be conducted at the GSU office with the remaining three weeks conducted at the child’s home. In the Post-Intervention phase, measures of communication, adaptive behavior, parent perception, and education placement will be given at 3-, 6-, and 12-month intervals.

Over the four-year period (until August 2004), the project staff will continuously recruit a total of 60 children and their families to participate. In addition to receiving 12 weeks of free language intervention, the children and families will also receive free of charge the following: developmental and language testing both pre- and post-intervention, intervention sessions that are geared toward teaching families how to implement language intervention in the home environment, parking for visits conducted at GSU, and intervention materials.

from the Toddler Language Intervention abstract