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Interventions for preschool children with language impairment from communities characterized by nonmainstream dialect have seldom been subjected to clinical trials. The purpose of this study is to compare a maximally integrated, child-initiated approach (AMALS) to an additive, clinician-directed control group (DTA) via randomized clinical trial and to examine the role of nonmainstream dialect for its relative impact on morphosyntactic abilities. This poster includes results from the first cohort (20 participants) of a larger study. Language samples were obtained prior to treatment, post treatment, and one-month follow-up. Semantic measures included percent utterances produced at higher levels of semantic complexity. Morphosyntactic measures included percent of t-units, mean length of t-unit, clause density, and noun phrase elaboration. Dialectal measures included dialect density. AMALS group produced interpretive utterances at a higher rate than DTA group. A relationship between dialect density and morphosyntactic abilities was indicated. Analyses provide evidence that multiple aspects of language can be addressed simultaneously by targeting levels of semantic complexity via scaffolding during repeated storybook reading. Supported by R15 DC009027-01A2 from NIH-NIDCD
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