Poster #23 - Parents Plus: Effects of a Parent-Implemented Intervention on Children’s Language and Parent Responsivity

• In Event: Poster Session 18

Abstract

Nearly 1 million preschoolers in the U.S. have a disability, and the largest percentage (40%) are diagnosed with developmental language disorders (DLD; Hussar et al., 2020). Because early language skills are related to school readiness and later academic success (e.g., Justice et al., 2015), it is imperative that these children receive early intervention. However, logistical barriers often prevent speech-language pathologists from meaningfully involving parents in their preschool children’s services. As such, language learning opportunities are lost. When parents receive training on how to support their preschool children’s language development, children’s language outcomes improve (e.g., Girolametto et al., 2007; Roberts et al., 2019). Additionally, training parents has led to increases in their levels of responsivity with their children (Yoder & Warren, 2002). To provide accessible parent training, we developed Parents Plus, an online intervention which consists of (a) training modules (via an app) that teach parents to use focused stimulation (FS), an evidence-based language stimulation strategy (e.g., Smith-Lock et al., 2013), (b) parent implementation of FS during typical activities; and (c) remote practice-based coaching.

This session addresses two research questions:
1. Do children whose parents use Parents Plus develop more advanced morphosyntactic and vocabulary skills compared to children in the control condition?
2. Are parents who use Parents Plus more responsive to their children compared to parents in the control condition?

We conducted a randomized-controlled trial where 31 parent-child dyads were randomly assigned to control (n = 15) or intervention (n = 16) conditions. All children had DLD, with a mean age of 48 months (SD: 7.8 months). Additional demographic information is shown in Table 1.

As shown in Table 2, at pre-, post-test, and follow-up (3 months after post), children’s language skills were assessed using the Core Language Index of the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-P2 (CELF-P2), the Test of Early Grammatical Impairment (TEGI), and play-based conversational language samples. Based on TEGI and language sample data, we created a morphosyntactic composite variable that indicates a child’s percent accuracy of targeted forms (e.g., pronouns, past tense, auxiliary/copula be). Language samples were also coded to calculate the number of different words spoken (NDW), a measure of vocabulary diversity. Additionally, parents and children were recorded playing at these time points. Videos were coded for parents’ responsivity, namely positive regard and sensitivity (1=very low to 7 =very high). No significant differences existed between condition for any variables at pre-test.

ANCOVA analyses revealed no significant treatment effect for children’s language skills at post-test or follow-up when controlling for pre-test scores, which was not unexpected given the small sample’s lack of power. Yet, effect size estimates uniformly favored Parents Plus over control (with small to large effects). For parent responsivity, we found a significant treatment effect for sensitivity at follow-up when controlling for pre-test scores (F (1, 26) =4.49, p= .046); no significant effects were found for positive regard.

In sum, results indicate that Parents Plus is demonstrating promise for improving language outcomes for children with DLD and parent responsivity.

Authors

• Brook Sawyer, Lehigh University
  Presenting Author

• Yael Gross, Lehigh University

• Carol Scheffner Hammer, Columbia University

• Julie Smith, Teachers College Columbia University

• Julie K Santoro, DeSales University