Background: Approaches to intervention with young children with delayed or deviant communication skills have tended to focus directly on the production and comprehension of linguistic forms. Research in developmental psychology, however, has highlighted the role of joint attention and action within a mutually negotiated frame in early communicative development.
Aims: An approach to intervention was developed which uses graded participation in such 'formats' to promote language development in 3- to 5-year-olds with significant delays or deviance in communication skills. This study was designed to evaluate this in comparison with a more conventional approach.
Sample: The sample comprised twenty 3- to 5-year-olds attending a diagnostic nursery or a speech and language support centre attached to a mainstream primary school.
Method: In the intervention, developmentally ordered sequences of exchange games provided predictable ruled-based and structured joint contexts of action, within which verbal and non-verbal exchanges between an adult and child could be meaningfully used. In the control condition, participants received more conventional intervention focusing more directly on language per se. Level of participation in dyadic play was assessed in terms both of role and cognitive complexity, and for the present study language development was assessed using the verbal subtests of the WPPSI. The study entailed both a between- and a within-subjects design.
Results: Cross-sectional and longitudinal comparisons confirmed that this form of intervention was significantly more effective than the control condition in increasing children's level of participation in social game formats and in promoting their language development; moreover, these were significantly correlated.
Conclusions: The results indicate that the development of language skills can be promoted more effectively through (re-) constructing the interpersonal framework of pre-linguistic communicative development than through conventional intervention focusing directly upon language per se.