An Experimental Parent-Assisted Treatment Program for Preschool Language-Delayed Children

Six preschool children with Down’s syndrome were subjects in an experimental program using parents as the primary language trainers. Three children served as experimental subjects and three as controls. The program applied the Environmental Language Intervention Strategy to effect a generalized functional language in children who primarily were capable of only single-word utterances. The major objective was to increase utterance length and grammatical complexity. The two essential procedures were to train immediate generalization of language changes from imitation to parallel conversation and play activities and to educate parents as language trainers to effect immediate transfer of training. The five-month program ran in two stages, two months with professionals and mothers as language trainers and three months in the home with parents as the sole language trainers. Results from the two-month stage indicated marked increases in utterance length and grammatical complexity in imitation and conversation for all experimental subjects but negligible changes for the controls. Follow-up assessment indicated continued language increments for the experimental subjects over three months of home programming with parents as the sole language trainers. The experimental language growth in the mean length of utterance over three months of home programming for the retarded children was comparable to growth for normally developing children. An epilogue reports successful replication of the program with the original control subjects.