Cognitive and linguistic effects of narrative-based language intervention in children with Developmental Language Disorder.

Background And Aims: Narrative-based language intervention provides a naturalistic context for targeting overall story structure and specific syntactic goals in children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). Given the cognitive demands of narratives, narrative-based language intervention also has the potential to positively impact related abilities such as working memory and academic skills.

Methods: Ten children (8-11 years old) with DLD completed 15 sessions of narrative-based language intervention.

Lessons learned in practice-based research: Studying language interventions for young children in the real world.

Background And Aims: Practice-based research holds potential as a promising solution to closing the research-practice gap, because it addresses research questions based on problems that arise in clinical practice and tests whether systems and interventions are effective and sustainable in a clinical setting. One type of practice-based research involves capturing practice by collecting evidence within clinical settings to evaluate the effectiveness of current practices. Here, we describe our collaboration between researchers and clinicians that sought to answer clinician-driven questions about community-based language interventions for young children (Are our interventions effective? What predicts response to our interventions?) and to address questions about the characteristics, strengths, and challenges of engaging in practice-based research.