Reading Intervention to Children With Developmental Language Disorder

NCT ID: NCT05295472

Last Updated: 2025-12-18

Study Results

Results pending

The study team has not published outcome measurements, participant flow, or safety data for this trial yet. Check back later for updates.

Basic Information

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Recruitment Status

COMPLETED

Clinical Phase

NA

Total Enrollment

67 participants

Study Classification

INTERVENTIONAL

Study Start Date

2021-08-01

Study Completion Date

2023-06-30

Brief Summary

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The main purpose of this study is to investigate if the internet-based computer-game Grapholearn (GL) is an effective tool for early and intensive intervention of the reading decoding skills in Swedish children with DLD, as compared to two control groups of children with DLD (I) playing a math computer game, and (II) attending usual schooling.

Hypothesis: Five weeks of 20 sessions of GL will improve the accuracy of word and nonword decoding skills in children with DLD from baseline to T2 and T3. The GL intervention group will perform higher number of accuratly decoded words and nonwords than the two control groups at T2, and at T3.

The second aim is to elucidate how the parents' language and reading skills, prevalence of language-related diagnoses, and socio-economic-status, and the children's self-reported self-esteem is related to their reading skills.

Hypothesis 1: Children with DLD who's parents show poor language and/or reading skills will perform lower on the word/nonword decoding tests.

Hypothesis 2: Children who show no significant improvement of word/nonword decoding skills will to a higher degree have parents with reading difficulties.

Hypothesis 3: Parents highest level of education will not be associated with the participating childrens language and reading skills.

Hypothesis 4: Results from the self-reported self-esteem will be lower than normdata from the test manual, and will not be associated with the children's language and reading skills.

Detailed Description

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(I) The investigators will collect the following cognitive measures from each participant with DLD: Decoding of words and nonwords, and words occurring in the Grapholearn computer game; naming of the letters in the Swedish alphabet; non-verbal IQ; articulation; grammar production; nonword repetition; verbal working memory; and general language ability. The tasks assessing reading decoding skills are administered at T1, T2, and T3, while all other tests are administered only at baseline. The test administrators are blinded for group (intervention or control groups).

(II) Anamnestic interviews with the participants' parents aiming at collecting information about the child (diagnoses or developmental challenges); reading activities in the family; family aggregation of language-related diagnoses and problems in the parents and siblings, and highest level of education of each parent, as well as their current occupation.

(III) Language and reading tests of parents, same reading tests as in (I); and tests of nonword repetition, grammatical production of past tense; and sentence repetition.

(IV) Questionnaire to the schools covering type and dose of formal reading instruction, and who is providing this instruction (e.g., teacher or special teacher) and in what kind of context (individual, whole class, and/or in small groups of children).

The investigators will perform analysis of primary and secondary outcomes and influence of background factors in a mixed linear model with time- and groupinteraction effects. Background factors will be presented with relevant descriptive statistics, such as mean and standard deviations.

Conditions

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Developmental Language Disorder

Keywords

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reading intervention

Study Design

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Allocation Method

RANDOMIZED

Intervention Model

PARALLEL

Primary Study Purpose

TREATMENT

Blinding Strategy

SINGLE

Investigators

Study Groups

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Usual schooling

Children with DLD who attend a special school for children with DLD. This children will have normal schooling as usual without playing any of the above computer games.

Group Type ACTIVE_COMPARATOR

Usual schooling

Intervention Type BEHAVIORAL

No GL or Math computer games, only the usual schooling

Grapholearn group

Children with DLD who attend a special school for children with DLD. This group will play the computer game GL in school for 5 weeks, 20 sessions, 15-30 min per session. Supervised by a teacher.

Group Type EXPERIMENTAL

Grapholearn

Intervention Type BEHAVIORAL

GL is a computer game based on the phonics-method (i.e., graphem-phoneme correspondence). It was developed at Jyväskylä University in Finland, in several languages, among others also for Swedish.

Math game group

Children with DLD who attend a special school for children with DLD. This group will play a computer game focusing on math in school for 5 weeks, 20 sessions, 15-30 min per session. Supervised by a teacher.

Group Type ACTIVE_COMPARATOR

Vector

Intervention Type BEHAVIORAL

A computer game focusing on children's development of mathematic skills

Interventions

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Grapholearn

GL is a computer game based on the phonics-method (i.e., graphem-phoneme correspondence). It was developed at Jyväskylä University in Finland, in several languages, among others also for Swedish.

Intervention Type BEHAVIORAL

Vector

A computer game focusing on children's development of mathematic skills

Intervention Type BEHAVIORAL

Usual schooling

No GL or Math computer games, only the usual schooling

Intervention Type BEHAVIORAL

Eligibility Criteria

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Inclusion Criteria

* DLD diagnoses
* attending a special school for children with DLD
* attending Swedish schoolgrades 0 to 4

Exclusion Criteria

\- non-Swedish speaking
Minimum Eligible Age

6 Years

Maximum Eligible Age

12 Years

Eligible Sex

ALL

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

No

Sponsors

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Karolinska Institutet

OTHER

Sponsor Role lead

Responsible Party

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Nelli Kalnak

Principal Investigator

Responsibility Role PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

Principal Investigators

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Nelli Kalnak, PhD

Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

Karolinska Institutet

Locations

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Karolinska Institutet

Stockholm, Stockholm County, Sweden

Site Status

Countries

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Sweden

Other Identifiers

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2020-02655

Identifier Type: -

Identifier Source: org_study_id