Evaluation of an Explicit Approach to Teach Grammatical Forms to Children with Developmental Language Disorders

Abstract

The current study evaluated an alternative, explicit instruction procedure to teach true grammatical forms to children with developmental language disorders other than SLI. Two children with characteristics of ASD between the ages of 5 and 6 years participated in treatment targeting a weak grammatical structure. Each participant completed a series of treatment sessions that comprised implicit instructional approaches followed a series of treatment sessions that incorporated an explicit instructional approach. Accuracy was assessed during each session across baseline, implicit, and explicit conditions as well as 1 week, 1 month, and 2 months post treatment. Results revealed a significant advantage for the explicit treatment over the implicit treatment. Immediately after introducing an explicit instructional approach a marked increase in level and upward trend was observed as well as an increase in percent of non-overlapping data compared to baseline and implicit phases for both participants.