PROTOCOL: Language interventions for improving oral language outcomes in children with neurodevelopmental disorders: A systematic review

This protocol presents the plan for a systematic review that will investigate the effect of oral language interventions for children with intellectual disability (ID), language disorder (LD), autism spectrum disorder (ASD), Down syndrome (DS), Williams syndrome (WS), and fragile X syndrome (FXS). Language development is a highly frequent area of difficulty for children within these diagnostic groups, and oral language interventions are therefore important. However, to provide better evidence‐informed practice, we need to investigate what oral language interventions are effective and for whom. The systematic review will not only investigate the effect of oral language interventions targeted at specific disorders but also identify interventions that may be yield similar improvements in different neurodevelopmental disorders. Language is a crucial skill to master in childhood. Many studies emphasise that language content, structure and functional use (pragmatics) in communication is important as a foundation for other key cognitive and social achievements (Stothard, Snowling, Bishop, Chipchase, & Kaplan, 1998). Language is obviously important for the child to communicate needs, participate in social interaction, engage in play, and share information and opinions with others (Bruner, 1975). In addition, language is a crucial pathway for developing other skills such as reading comprehension (Duff, Reen, Plunkett, & Nation, 2015; Lepola, Lynch, Kiuru, Laakkonen, & Niemi, 2016; Nation & Norbury, 2005). Further, as noted by Hulme and Snowling (2013), a child with a poor oral language will not acquire reading skills nor be able to fully participate socially. Language deficits are quite common and thus frequently encountered at community child development clinics (O’Hare, 2013). Black, Vahratian, and Hoffman (2015) reported on data from the National Health Interview Survey in the US finding that 3.3% reported their child between 3–17 years old, to have experienced language problems during the past year. A recent population‐based survey conducted in England estimated the prevalence of children having language problems of a currently unknown cause to be 7.58% (consistent with previous epidemiological studies of “specific language impairment” conducted in North America (Beitchman, Nair, Clegg, & Patel, 1986; Tomblin et al., 1997), whereas 2.34% had language deficits as part of another condition (Norbury et al., 2016). The latter group had more severe language deficits and were more likely to have co‐occurring nonverbal IQ deficits and social, emotional and behavioural problems. They were also more likely to be receiving special education support, though not necessarily more specific speech‐language therapy. Another study by Norbury et al. (2015) showed that teacher‐ rated language problems was the single best predictor of academic success during the first year of school. A large portion of these children belong under the umbrella terms of developmental disorders or