Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2021 Mar 23;11(3):407.
doi: 10.3390/brainsci11030407.

Efficacy of the Treatment of Developmental Language Disorder: A Systematic Review

Sara Rinaldi  1   2 , Maria Cristina Caselli  3 , Valentina Cofelice  4 , Simonetta D'Amico  5   6 , Anna Giulia De Cagno  2 , Giuseppina Della Corte  7 , Maria Valeria Di Martino  8 , Brigida Di Costanzo  9   10 , Maria Chiara Levorato  6   11 , Roberta Penge  12 , Tiziana Rossetto  2 , Alessandra Sansavini  6   13 , Simona Vecchi  14 , Pierluigi Zoccolotti  15   16
Affiliations
Review

Efficacy of the Treatment of Developmental Language Disorder: A Systematic Review

Sara Rinaldi et al. Brain Sci. .

Abstract

Background: Language disorder is the most frequent developmental disorder in childhood and it has a significant negative impact on children's development. The goal of the present review was to systematically analyze the effectiveness of interventions in children with developmental language disorder (DLD) from an evidence-based perspective.

Methods: We considered systematic reviews, meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials (RCTs), control group cohort studies on any type of intervention aimed at improving children's skills in the phono-articulatory, phonological, semantic-lexical, and morpho-syntactic fields in preschool and primary school children (up to eight years of age) that were diagnosed with DLD. We identified 27 full-length studies, 26 RCT and one review.

Results: Early intensive intervention in three- and four-year-old children has a positive effect on phonological expressive and receptive skills and acquisitions are maintained in the medium term. Less evidence is available on the treatment of expressive vocabulary (and no evidence on receptive vocabulary). Intervention on morphological and syntactic skills has effective results on expressive (but not receptive) skills; however, a number of inconsistent results have also been reported. Only one study reports a positive effect of treatment on inferential narrative skills. Limited evidence is also available on the treatment of meta-phonological skills. More studies investigated the effectiveness of interventions on general language skills, which now appears as a promising area of investigation, even though results are not all consistent.

Conclusions: The effectiveness of interventions over expressive and receptive phonological skills, morpho-syntactic skills, as well as inferential skills in narrative context underscores the importance that these trainings be implemented in children with DLD.

Keywords: developmental language disorder; evidence-based; intervention.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Risk of bias found in individual studies considered in the present review. Green: low bias risk; yellow: unclear bias risk; red: high bias risk [63,64,65,66,67,68,69,70,71,72,73,74,75,76,77,78,79,80,81,82,83,84,85,86,87,88].
Figure 2
Figure 2
Percentages of risk of bias found in the studies considered in the present review.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Prisma flow chart of included studies.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Rapin I. Language heterogeneity and regression in the autism spectrum disorders—Overlaps with other childhood language regression syndromes. Clin. Neurosci. Res. 2006;6:209–218. doi: 10.1016/j.cnr.2006.06.011. - DOI
    1. Bishop D.M.V. Pre- and perinatal hazards and family background in children with specific language impairments: A study of twins. Brain Lang. 1997;56:1–26. doi: 10.1006/brln.1997.1729. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Laws G., Bishop D.V.M. A comparison of language abilities in adolescents with Down Syndrome and children with specific language impairment. J. Speech Lang. Hear. Res. 2003;46:1324–1339. doi: 10.1044/1092-4388(2003/103). - DOI - PubMed
    1. Law J., Boyle J., Harris F., Harkness A., Nye C. Prevalence and natural history of primary speech and language delay: Findings from a systematic review of the literature. Int. J. Lang. Comm. Dis. 2000;35:165–188. - PubMed
    1. Roch M., Florit E., Levorato M.C. La produzione di narrative in bambini con disturbo di linguaggio di età prescolare [Narrative production in preschool children with language impairment] G. Neuropsichiatr. Dell’Età Evol. 2017;37:73–82.

LinkOut - more resources