Syntactic Intervention for Cantonese-speaking Children With DLD

The goal of this clinical trial is to compare the efficacy of explicit vs. implicit intervention on subject relative clause production in Cantonese-speaking children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). It will also learn about individual difference predictors of intervention outcomes. The main questions it aims to answer are: 1. Will the explicit intervention (Shape Coding+syntactic priming) on relative clause production lead to better outcomes than implicit intervention (syntactic priming only)? 2. Can pre-intervention procedural learning, working memory (WM) capacities, and grammar impairment severity predict the intervention outcomes across children with DLD? 3. Will 10 intervention sessions (500 doses of the target structure) lead to learning progress in children with DLD, even with implicit intervention, and will the progress plateau at some point of the intervention? Researchers will compare the explicit intervention to the implicit intervention to see if the explicit intervention leads to better interventional outcomes. Participants will: * Undergo diagnostic assessments of DLD to confirm their DLD status. * Complete pre-intervention assessments to assess their procedural learning and working memory capacities. * Undergo the intervention phase, which consists of a pretest, 10 intervention sessions, three posttests (after the 1st, 5th and 10th intervention), and a retention test (1 month after the last intervention).

NCT Number	NCT06954194
Lead Sponsor	The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Conditions	Developmental Language Disorder
Enrollment	32 participants
Start Date	2024-02-10
Primary Completion	2026-05 (estimated)
Study Completion	2026-05 (estimated)
Updated on ClinicalTrials.gov	2025-05-04