Intervention Effects on Phonological Processing in Children With Developmental Speech and/or Language Disorder: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Studies With Group Design.
Marja Laasonen, Susana Sanduvete-Chaves, Salvador Chacón-Moscoso and 9 others
Oral language interventions improved phonological awareness and short-term memory in children with speech or language disorders, with medium-to-large effects.
Small-group delivery and integrated approaches showed the strongest results. Evidence for rapid naming is too thin to draw conclusions.
Key findings
1Oral language interventions produced a medium-to-large improvement in phonological awareness compared to control groups, with every included study showing the treatment group outperforming the control.
2Phonological short-term memory also improved significantly following intervention, with large effect sizes across all study designs examined.
3Only one study reported phonological retrieval efficiency as an outcome, and its effect was small and non-significant, so no meta-analysis was possible.
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What it does not show
Only English-language studies were included, potentially excluding relevant work published in other languages. Four of the 22 studies had fewer than 25 participants, limiting the power of individual studies. Only one study reported phonological retrieval efficiency, so no meaningful conclusion can be drawn for that skill. The database search was last updated in August 2022, so more recent studies are not represented. The included studies used very different intervention approaches, some directly training phonological awareness and others using broader language programmes with phonological processing as a secondary outcome, making it impossible to tell which type of intervention produced the gains. The age range spanned four to over ten years, a period of substantial developmental change, and the small number of studies prevented a reliable analysis of age effects.
Declared interests
The authors declare no conflicts of interest. Funding was provided by the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST Action IS1406), ANID, the Government of Chile, the National Scientific and Technological Development Fund, the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion y Universidades, the Government of Spain, and FCT (Foundation for Science and Technology).
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the positive effects as evidence that a specific intervention type is superior. The included studies used very different approaches, some directly training phonological awareness and others using broader language programmes where phonological processing was a secondary measure. The review could not separate which type of intervention produced the gains, and several moderator comparisons rested on only two or three studies.
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