Efficacy of a Pragmatic Intervention to Improve Adaptation to Context and Interlocutor

Patients with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) or Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have communicational difficulties to adapt their language to context and to interlocutors. These difficulties have long term impacts on education and social life of these patients. Speech language therapists (SLT) helps child and teenagers with pragmatic and communicational disorders. Nevertheless, few research evaluated the efficacy of such interventions.

In the present research, the students will do a literature review to identify efficacy intervention's strategies of pragmatic disorders. Then, 2 to 5 patients, aged from 8 to 14 years old, with ASD or DLD and pragmatic disorders, and who haven't intellectual disorder will be recruited. They will come to the faculty of psychology of UCLouvain before the beginning of the intervention. In this pretest session, parents will answer questionnaires et children will have tests in order to evaluate their pragmatic abilities (during 30 minutes), like conversations, role plays, communication referential tasks, etc. This evaluation will be video recorded to code pragmatic abilities. Then, a group intervention of ten sessions will be proposed (1 session per week, 10 weeks). Activities will include role plays, conversations, etc. At the end of the intervention period, a post test session, like the pretest session, will be proposed to evaluate intervention efficacy.

The design is multiple study cases. This is the best design to control efficacy of these kind of interventions considering the inter-individual variability of DLD and ASD patients. This study is original since few research evaluated the efficiency of pragmatic intervention. Some studies demonstrated the efficacy of pragmatic intervention in DLD and ASD patients but theses researches were conducted in English-speaking countries. Furthermore, the present research will propose a group intervention, which weren't proposed in the literature to our knowledge (individual intervention). If the group intervention is efficacy, the cost-benefice ratio would be interested.

Study Overview

• Status: Terminated
• Conditions: Autism Spectrum Disorder; Developmental Language Disorder
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: social communication intervention (pragmatic)

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 5
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• Belgium
  • Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, 1348
    • UCLouvain - faculty of psychology

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 8 years to 14 years (Child)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No
• Genders Eligible for Study: All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• diagnostic of ASD or DLD
• pragmatic difficulties

Exclusion Criteria:

• intellectual deficiency

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Treatment
• Allocation: N/A
• Interventional Model: Single Group Assignment
• Masking: None (Open Label)

Number of Arms

1

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: 2 to 5 ASD or TDL patients; 2 to 5 ASD or TDL patients, 8 to 14 years old, with no intellectual disability.	Behavioral: social communication intervention (pragmatic); 10 sessions of group intervention in order to improve pragmatic/social communication. one session of one hour per week. Activities will included role play, conversations, etc.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
social communication abilities (according parents)	questionnaire (Children Communication Checklist) - pragmatic scale Maximum 162 (good performance), minimum 86 (bad performance)	through study completion, an average of 6 months
social communication abilities (evaluated by clinician)	social communication task, conversations	through study completion, an average of 6 months

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Université Catholique de Louvain

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): December 1, 2021
• Primary Completion (Actual): June 1, 2022
• Study Completion (Actual): June 1, 2022

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: November 8, 2021
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: November 8, 2021
• First Posted (Actual): November 19, 2021

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): June 21, 2022
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: June 14, 2022
• Last Verified: June 1, 2022

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Additional Relevant MeSH Terms: Mental Disorders; Pathologic Processes; Nervous System Diseases; Neurologic Manifestations; Neurobehavioral Manifestations; Neurodevelopmental Disorders; Child Development Disorders, Pervasive; Communication Disorders; Disease; Autism Spectrum Disorder; Language Disorders; Language Development Disorders
• Other Study ID Numbers: PRAGMA-INTERV

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: No

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No