A Tutorial for Enhancing Clarity and Transparency in Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences Intervention Research With the TIDieR.

PURPOSE: The speech-language-hearing sciences (SLHS) field relies on rigorous research to inform clinical practice and improve outcomes for individuals with communication, swallowing, and hearing needs. However, a significant challenge in our field is the lack of accessibility, transparency, and reproducibility of this research. Such insufficiencies limit the generalizability and impact of study findings, particularly intervention research, as it becomes difficult to replicate and use the interventions in both clinical practice and research. In this tutorial, we highlight one particularly useful tool, the Template for Intervention Description and Replication (TIDieR; Hoffmann et al., 2014) checklist, which researchers can follow to improve reproducibility practices in SLHS. CONCLUSIONS: We provide an overview and guide on using the TIDieR checklist with a practical example of its implementation. Additionally, we discuss the potential benefits of increased transparency and reproducibility for SLHS, including improved clinical outcomes and increased confidence in the effectiveness of interventions. We also provide specific recommendations for scientists, journal reviewers, editors, and editorial boards as they seek to adopt, implement, and encourage using the TIDieR checklist.

Five Additional Evidence-Based Principles to Facilitate Grammar Development for Children With Developmental Language Disorder.

PURPOSE: Because the development of grammatical forms is difficult for many children with developmental language disorder (DLD), language interventions often focus on supporting children's use of grammatical language. This article proposes five additional principles to those suggested by Fey et al. (2003) to facilitate the development of grammatical forms by children with DLD. Three of the five additional principles address the selection and presentation of linguistic contexts to be used with target grammatical forms (Principles 11-13); two principles encourage the incorporation of additional intervention components: auditory bombardment and explicit instruction (Principles 14 and 15, respectively). METHOD: We present empirical evidence and, when available, describe the theoretical motivations to support each of the five additional principles. We then describe how we have integrated the five principles into 20- to 30-min intervention sessions that target regular past tense -ed, third-person singular -s, present progressive is/are verb+ing, or do/does questions for 4- to 8-year-olds with DLD. Each session includes four activities: sentence imitation, story retell, structured play, and auditory bombardment. We provide details of each activity, relevant materials, and illustrative examples that highlight the incorporation of each of the principles. RESULTS: When targeting the development of grammatical forms in intervention, current evidence supports the use of a high degree of linguistic variability (Principle 11), the presentation of target forms in contexts that vary in difficulty (Principle 12), the presentation of target forms in sentences that vary in syntactic structure (Principle 13), the use of auditory bombardment (Principle 14), and the incorporation of explicit instruction (Principle 15). Clinicians can use these principles when targeting a range of grammatical forms in relatively short intervention sessions comprising a variety of activities. CONCLUSIONS: This article encourages the employment of five additional principles into grammatical language intervention. Descriptions, materials, and examples demonstrate how the principles can all be addressed within a single intervention session.

Verbs Matter: A Tutorial for Determining Verb Difficulty.

PURPOSE: Research indicates that when teaching grammatical forms to children, the verbs used to model specific grammatical inflections matter. When learning grammatical forms, children have higher performance when they hear many unique verb forms that vary in their frequency and phonological complexity. In this tutorial, we demonstrate a method for identifying and characterizing a large number of verbs based on their frequency and complexity. METHOD: We selected verbs from an open-access database of transcribed child language samples. We extracted verbs produced by 5- to 8.9-year-old children in four morphosyntactic contexts: regular past tense -ed, third person singular -s, is/are + verb+ing, and do/does questions. We ranked verbs based on their frequency of occurrence across transcripts. We also coded the phonological complexity of each verb. We coded each verb as high or low frequency and high or low phonological complexity. RESULTS: The synthesis yielded 129 unique verbs used in the regular past tense -ed context, 107 verbs used in the third person singular -s context, 69 verbs used in the is/are + verb+ing context, and 16 verbs used in the do/does question context. We created tables for each form that include the frequency rankings and phonological complexity scores for every verb. CONCLUSIONS: Clinicians may use the verb lists, frequency ratings, and phonological complexity scores to help identify verbs to incorporate into assessment and intervention sessions with children. Researchers and clinicians may use the step-by-step approach presented in the tutorial to identify verbs or other syntactic components used in different morphosyntactic contexts or produced by individuals of different demographics in different speaking contexts.

Caregiver-Implemented Communication Interventions for Children Identified as Having Language Impairment 0 Through 48 Months of Age: A Scoping Review.

PURPOSE: Caregiver-implemented interventions are frequently used to support the early communication of young children with language impairment. Although there are numerous studies and meta-analyses supporting their use, there is a need to better understand the intervention approaches and identify potential gaps in the research base. With that premise, we conducted a scoping review to synthesize existing data with an end goal of informing future research directions. METHOD: We identified relevant studies by comprehensively searching four databases. After deduplication, we screened 5,703 studies. We required included studies (N = 59) to evaluate caregiver-implemented communication interventions and include at least one caregiver communication outcome measure. We extracted information related to the (a) study, child, and caregiver characteristics; (b) intervention components (e.g., strategies taught, delivery method and format, and dosage); and (c) caregiver and child outcome measures (e.g., type, quality, and level of evidence). RESULTS: We synthesized results by age group of the child participants. There were no studies with children in the prenatal through 11-month-old age range identified in our review that yielded a caregiver language outcome measure with promising or compelling evidence. For the 12- through 23-month group, there were seven studies, which included eight communication intervention groups; for the 24- through 35-month group, there were 21 studies, which included 26 intervention groups; and for the 36- through 48-month group, there were 21 studies, which included 23 intervention groups. Across studies and age groups, there was considerable variability in the reporting of study characteristics, intervention approaches, and outcome measures. CONCLUSION: Our scoping review highlights important research gaps and inconsistencies in study reporting that should be addressed in future investigations. SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.20289195.