Development of A Language Skills Promotion Package Based on Cognitive Rehabilitation and Determining its Effectiveness on the Expressive Language Performance of Children with Specific Language Impairment

Language is one of the most important components of growth in children. Therefore, this study aimed to develop a language skills improvement package based on cognitive rehabilitation and determine its effectiveness on the expressive language performance of children with specific language impairment (SLI).

The method of the current research was of mixed exploratory type. The statistical population in the qualitative section were scientific articles and the opinions of university professors and experts. In the qualitative phase, data were collected through deductive thematic analysis, and then a set of interventions was developed over 12 sessions, and its content validity was confirmed. The quantitative part of the research was a clinical trial, and its statistical population included all children aged 5-7 years with a specific language disorder who were referred to private speech therapy clinics in Borujerd, Iran, among which 30 children with an average age of 6.31 ± 0.92 were selected by purposive sampling method and randomly replaced in two experimental and control groups. The instruments used in this study were the fourth version of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, a semi-structured clinical interview, and the Newcomer and Hammill language development test. Finally, the data were analyzed using SPSS software (version 24) with analysis of variance with repeated measurements.

Based on the obtained results, there was a significant difference between the mean expressive language scores in the pre-test, post-test, and follow-up stages (P<0.01).

In general, it can be said that the language skills promotion package based on cognitive rehabilitation is effective in improving the expressive language of children with SLI, and therefore, this package can be used as an intervention method to improve the expressive language of children with SLI.