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Not just the what, but the why: Piloting Building Early Sentences Therapy
Building Early Sentences Therapy (BEST) is a new language intervention for 3-6 year olds with severe language difficulties. It is based on usage-based theory of language acquisition and places heavy emphasis on the input the child hears. It also uses toys and signing to visually represent language, at the same time as spoken language. For the past 3 years researchers at Newcastle University have been piloting BEST to establish whether it is an effective intervention for children with expressive or mixed (expressive-receptive) language difficulties. Preliminary results suggest that BEST may be effective for supporting children’s language development, and the intervention will soon undergo the next stage in the evaluation process in the Language Intervention in the Early Years (LIVELY) trial.
Whilst we are gathering evidence about whether BEST works, it is important to consider the finer points of the intervention and its delivery. This allows us to optimise the intervention protocol and increase our theoretical understanding of language difficulties. The BEST study is therefore seeking to answer several additional questions about why BEST works. Firstly, the researchers are investigating whether the signing has additional benefits above and beyond the intervention itself- in other words whether signing is an ‘active ingredient’ of the therapy. To do this the researchers delivered half of the sessions with additional signing, and half without, to see whether children make more progress when they see the words signed whilst also hearing them spoken.
Next, the researchers wanted to investigate whether the number of sessions the children receive affects their progress. There are 16 therapy sessions in total, but many children missed sessions due to absence from school. The researchers gathered data on how many sessions each child received to try and find out if there is an ‘optimum dosage’. This has important real-life implications, because often only a certain number of sessions can be funded by the NHS or offered by schools, and it is important to find out how many are necessary to help children make progress.
Finally the researchers wanted to find out if there are certain types of children who particularly benefit from the intervention, so that they can be targeted in future therapy implementation. To do this we asked parents and teachers involved in the study to complete questionnaires about the children’s language difficulties, social, emotional, behavioural difficulties, and how well they can use language for functional purposes. We can then analyse whether some children with particular baseline characteristics make more progress than others when receiving the therapy.
The analysis for this study are ongoing, and the results will be posted here when they are complete. We are excited to find out more about why BEST is effective for children with language difficulties.
By Anastasia Trębacz
Last modified: Mon, 04 Nov 2019 09:13:30 GMT