Verb Selection as the Heart of DLD Intervention - Dr Amanda Owen Van Horne, University of Delaware

City LCS is delighted to host Dr Amanda Owen Van Horne for an exciting talk about DLD intervention, generously funded by the Heather van der Lely Foundation.

6:15 registration

6:30 introduction and talk (see below for details)

7:45 wine reception

Verb Selection as the Heart of Intervention: The Impact on Outcomes and Implications for Implementation

Amanda J. Owen Van Horne PhD CCC-SLP

University of Delaware

The role of the verb as a key element for promoting language learning and generalization is increasing. My own work indicating that careful selection of the verb used to illustrate a grammatical form can improve grammatical learning in children with DLD is complemented by work from Hadley that suggests that targeting new noun+verb combinations improves early syntax and work by Plante that highlights the role of input variability. In this talk, I present rationales for different approaches to verb selection during therapy and evidence that careful selection of verbs used as exemplars improves child outcomes. I also discuss the barriers to actually implementing these methods of selecting treatment exemplars and propose solutions to those barriers that warrant further investigation.

Funding: Work presented in the talk was funded by an NIH K23 grant awarded to Dr. Owen Van Horne, an NSF grant awarded to Drs. McGregor and Dr. Owen Van Horne, and funding from the University of Delaware.