ABSTRACT

A casual observer assigned to evaluate the history of intervention research in child-ren’s language disorders might well determine that the modus operandi has been“All researchers to themselves!” There clearly are pockets of investigations that reflect thematic, programmatic research targeting specific intervention methods and strategies across studies and even across laboratories (see especially studies on milieu approaches to early intervention, Hancock & Kaiser, 2006; Warren et al., 2006), but it is far more common to find strands of research that, if in any sense complete, still are left unreplicated, with key methodological, empirical, theoretical, and consequently, clinical issues inadequately addressed. Law, Garrett, and Nye’s (2004) recent meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) evaluating speech and language interventions for children with primary speech and language disorders is an excellent illustration of this point. Although hundreds of published studies of language intervention are available, these investigators found only 25 RCTs that met their criteria for inclusion. Most importantly, only 13 of these, carried out over a 25-year period, dealt with issues similar enough to allow for combination into some form of subanalysis (e.g., expressive phonology, expressive vocabulary, receptive syntax).