The effectiveness of semantic intervention for word-finding difficulties in college-aged students (16–19 years) with persistent Language Disorder

Abstract

Background and aims Little evidence exists for the effectiveness of intervention for older adolescents and young adults with language disorders, particularly for those over 16 years. This study involves college-aged students aged 16–19 years with Language Disorder and Word-Finding Difficulties and investigates whether progress in word finding following 1:1 semantic intervention is greater than progress during a baseline period as measured by a standardised test. Methods Twenty-five college-aged students (20 males and 5 females) with Language Disorder and Word-Finding Difficulties (aged 16;4–18;4 years) participated in a single baseline design study comparing progress on the Test of Adolescent and Adult Word Finding during an intervention period with progress during a baseline period of equal length. Intervention was focused on semantics of different words from those in the Test of Adolescent and Adult Word Finding and was delivered 1:1 by the participants’ usual Speech and Language Therapist, 30 minutes per week, for eight weeks. Results The participants made significant progress in raw score on the Test of Adolescent and Adult Word Finding during both the baseline ( d = 1.4) and intervention ( d = 2.5) periods, but progress during the intervention period was significantly greater than during the baseline period ( d = 1.16). Individual data showed reliable change for five participants during the baseline period and for 20 participants during the intervention period. At the start of the study, all participants had standard scores below 85, but after intervention, 10/25 participants scored above 85. Conclusions Four hours of semantic intervention led to significantly greater gains on a standardised test of word finding than during a baseline period of equal length in 16–19 year olds with Language Disorder and Word-Finding Difficulties. The words in the standardised test had not been included in the intervention, indicating generalised gains. Implications This study shows that intervention (at least for Word-Finding Difficulties) can be effective for this older age group of college-aged students with Language Disorder and therefore the effectiveness of Speech and Language Therapy services for this age group in a wider range of areas of language should also be investigated.

Understanding differing outcomes from semantic and phonological interventions with children with word-finding difficulties: A group and case series study

“…They were all attending mainstream schools and were referred as having word-finding difficulties. An N of 20 was chosen based on an a priori power analysis (G*Power 3.1; Faul et al, 2007) assuming a within-participant effect size of the naming intervention of at least d=0.7 based on previous studies involving children with word-finding difficulties (Best, 2005;Bragard et al, 2012;Campbell, Nicoll & Ebbels, 2019;Ebbels et al, 2012;Wilson et al, 2015;Zens, et al, 2009), with an alpha level of 0.05, and power of 0.8 (2-tailed).The first two children to complete the intervention are described in a paper which uses computational modelling to predict the outcome of intervention (Best et al, 2015). Inclusion criteria, which were retained throughout the study, were as follows: Finally, once the children had met the criteria above, recordings of their everyday conversation were considered by the first and second authors (both experienced SLPs) in order to establish whether there was clear evidence of word-finding difficulties in discourse.…”

Effectiveness of intervention focused on vocational course vocabulary in post‐16 students with (developmental) language disorder

“…However, it is recognized that adolescents and young adults with DLD continue to require support with language development and social and emotional well‐being (Spencer, 2018 ) and a growing number of studies have considered the effectiveness of intervention for adolescents. This includes interventions aiming to improve a range of language areas (Ebbels et al., 2017 ), receptive and expressive syntax (Balthazar & Scott, 2018 ; Ebbels, 2007 ; Ebbels & van der Lely, 2001 ; Ebbels et al., 2014 , 2007 ) word finding (Campbell et al., 2019 ; Ebbels et al., 2012 ; Hyde‐Wright et al., 1993 ) and vocabulary (Joffe et al., 2019 ; Lowe & Joffe, 2017 ; Lowe et al., 2019 ; Murphy et al., 2017 ; Spencer et al., 2017 ; Wright et al., 2017 ). However, despite the life‐long nature of DLD and its wide‐ranging impacts there is a prominent gap in the literature regarding the effectiveness of intervention in any area of language for students of post‐16 age (or indeed adults) with DLD.…”

“…However, despite the life‐long nature of DLD and its wide‐ranging impacts there is a prominent gap in the literature regarding the effectiveness of intervention in any area of language for students of post‐16 age (or indeed adults) with DLD. A few notable exceptions have targeted preparedness for job interviews (Mathrick et al., 2017 ), word finding (Campbell et al., 2019 ) and vocabulary (McGregor et al., 2020 ). The lack of intervention research with this age group is reflective of the lack of intervention typically provided to this group of young people, but in a vicious circle, the lack of evidence also contributes to the limited provision of services for secondary and post‐16 students (and adults) with DLD.…”

“…They will need to be able to recognize, understand and use these vocabulary items accurately. Promisingly, vocabulary intervention has been shown to be effective with students with language disorders of various ages (for reviews, see Lowe et al., 2018 ; Steele & Mills, 2011 ), including some with adolescents (Joffe et al., 2019 ; Lowe & Joffe, 2017 ; Lowe et al., 2019 ; Murphy et al., 2017 ; Spencer et al., 2017 ; Wright et al., 2018 ) and young adults (Campbell et al., 2019 ; McGregor et al., 2020 ). We will consider the two studies with young adults in greater detail below as they are of most relevance to the current study.…”

“…Campbell et al. ( 2019 ) evaluated an intervention for word‐retrieval difficulties with post‐16 students (aged 16–19 years) with severe levels of DLD attending a specialist college for students with language disorders. The participants received eight weekly 30‐min intervention sessions targeting real nouns from specific semantic categories.…”