Facilitating pragmatic skills through role-play in learners with language learning disability.
Fareeaa Abdoola, Penelope S Flack, Saira B Karrim
PMID 28828866WHAT IT FOUND
Eight children with language learning disability showed increases on pragmatic assessments after group therapy with introduction, narrative, discussion, role-play and reflection, but a later phase without role-play produced a larger task-score gain.
Only eight children were studied.
Key findings
01After the first phase, the experimental group received therapy with introduction, narrative, discussion, role-play and reflection; its average increases were 11 on the CELF-4 PP and 3.5 on the DCT, while the control group's average increases were 0.5 and 0.
02When the control group later received therapy without role-play, but with introduction, narrative, discussion and reflection, its average DCT increase was 7 and its CELF-4 PP increase was 0.25; the paper reports the control group had a higher DCT increase than the experimental group.
03Session records noted improvement in both targeted pragmatic skills, with requesting clarification easier to apply than stylistic variation, and generalisation to untrained skills in actively involved participants.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
Only eight children were studied, all from the same school and all English-dominant, so the findings cannot be generalised to wider caseloads. The groups were randomly assigned but unequal in ability, so baseline differences could affect the comparison. The paper reported averages and gain scores only, because the sample was too small for statistical testing. The researcher conducted part of the assessment, although third-party scoring was used for the discourse completion tasks. Pragmatic outcomes were assessed mainly in school contexts, so home or community generalisation was not measured. The children received a full group therapy package, so the study cannot prove role-play alone was responsible. Data collection took two and a half months, so normal maturation could have contributed to gains. Two experimental-group children already scored high before intervention, which may explain their smaller task-score gain.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the gains as proof that role-play alone works. The children received group therapy with introduction, narrative, discussion, role-play and reflection, only eight were studied, and the later phase without role-play produced a larger task-score gain.