NCT03525951

Parent-Level Predictors of Early Language Interaction Quality and Intervention Outcomes

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 156 (actual)
• Sponsor: University of Wisconsin, Madison · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 30 Months
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

Children with poor early language skills are at risk for academic, social, vocational, and health difficulties across the lifespan. Parent training-as part of early language intervention-is a cost-effective option to address this public health issue, but these interventions demonstrate large individual differences in outcomes and barriers to scalability. The purpose of this research is to examine parent-level predictors of early language interaction quality and modifiability during training, which will help increase intervention effectiveness.

Detailed description

This is a minimal-risk, behavioral clinical trial for adult parents and their children (2;6-4;0). The purpose of this study is to determine if and how parent language skills and behavioral awareness influence early language interactions and parent training. Participants will include parent-child dyads in three groups: 1) children who are typically developing (TD; Study 1 and 2), 2) children at risk for persistent developmental language disorder (DLD; Study 1 and 2), and 3) children with autism spectrum disorder and at risk for persistent DLD (ASD+DLD; Study 2). The investigators will examine whether parental language skills predict early language interaction quality (Aim 1; Study 1), whether parental behavioral awareness predicts modifiability during training (Aim 2; Study 2), and whether these predictors vary across children-specifically TD children, children with DLD, or with ASD+DLD (Aim 3; Study 2). The primary outcome measure will be parents' use of language stimulation strategies. The secondary outcome measure will be the number of adult-child conversational turns. The investigators hypothesize that parent language skills (Study 1) and behavioral awareness (Study 2) will be positively associated with the outcomes. However, the strength of the association may vary across the groups. The Study 1 protocol will involve a screening session and observational data collection sessions (TD and DLD groups). Study 1 will be a fully remote model of data collection. The Study 2 protocol will involve five sessions-baseline data collection (all groups), three parent training sessions (DLD and ASD+DLD), and follow-up data collection (all groups) across approximately five weeks. Study 2 will be fully remote. The investigators will collect data from demographic questionnaires, language and learning assessments, measures of parental behavioral awareness, and measures of parent-child language interaction quality (Study 1 and 2). These measures will be administered before and after three parent training sessions (Study 2). These sessions will follow the Teach-Model-Coach-Review framework (TMCR; 1) to train the Enhanced Milieu Teaching (EMT) strategies of responsive interaction, matched turns, language modeling, and expansions. After the training, parent-child dyads will complete the structured interaction and behavioral awareness tasks again (Study 2). The investigators will conduct inter- and intra-group analyses to explore the relationships between the independent (i.e., parent language abilities and behavioral awareness) and dependent (i.e., parent-child language interaction quality and parent modifiability during training) variables.

Conditions

• Language Development Disorders
• Autism Spectrum Disorder

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Enhanced Milieu Teaching	The parent training will incorporate the EMT strategies of responsive interaction, matched turns, language modeling, and expansions. There will be three, hour-long parent training sessions following the teach-model-coach-review format (TMCR). The TMCR framework teaching component will involve 10 minutes of verbal and visual instruction on the language stimulation target of interest. The teaching component will be followed by 15 minutes of clinician modeling of the target strategies with the child while the parent watches. The parent will then have the opportunity to practice using the strategy during naturalistic interaction with their child. The clinician will provide individualized coaching on the use of the target strategy during this 20-minute, parent-child interaction. Finally, the clinician will review the target strategies and set goals.
OTHER	no intervention comparison group	No intervention for observational (Study 1 and 2) and training (Study 2) data comparison.

Timeline

• Start date: 2021-03-22
• Primary completion: 2025-09-18
• Completion: 2025-09-18
• First posted: 2018-05-16
• Last updated: 2025-11-13

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States