Efficacy of complex morphosyntactic treatment (Hannig Russell et al., 2024)

Purpose: Selecting targets for morphosyntactic intervention is a critical component of treatment planning. The complexity approach suggests that, by treating a complex morphosyntactic target, improvements will occur for the treated structure and for related, simpler structures. This study evaluated the efficacy of the complexity approach for treating morphosyntactic deficits by targeting a complex BE verb question structure for children with developmental language disorder (DLD) and children with Down syndrome (DS) and observing its impact on treated and untreated BE verb structures. We also explored whether etiology impacted our participants’ treatment responses.

Method: Three participants with DLD and three with DS received treatment for the BE verb question structure in the context of a single-case multiple-baseline design across participants. Accuracy of production for the treated structure and untreated BE verb structures was measured across baseline, treatment, and posttreatment phases.

Results: Treatment of the complex BE verb question structure resulted in change on the treated structure for three participants (i.e., two with DLD and one with DS). Generalization of treatment to untreated, related BE verb structures occurred for all six participants. Outcomes indicated participants from both etiologies benefited from treatment.

Conclusions: This study provides evidence supporting the use of a complexity-based approach for selecting morphosyntactic treatment targets for children with DLD and children with DS. Additional research is needed to identify specific characteristics that may influence individual treatment responses.

Supplemental Material S1. Sample experimental probe for auxiliary BE questions.

Supplemental Material S2. Sample experimental probe for untreated structures.

Supplemental Material S3. Frequency of correct and incorrect attempts for each BE verb probe and per participant.

Supplemental Material S4. Flowchart for determining continuation or completion of treatment.

Hannig Russell, K. M., Wambaugh, J. L., Davis, J. L., & Redmond, S. M. (2024). Efficacy of complexity-based target selection for treating morphosyntactic deficits in children with developmental language disorder and children with down syndrome: a single-case experimental design. American Speech-Language Pathology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1044/2024_AJSLP-24-00171