Why Dose Frequency Affects Spoken Vocabulary in Preschoolers With Down Syndrome

Abstract

In an earlier randomized clinical trial, daily communication and language therapy resulted in more favorable spoken vocabulary outcomes than weekly therapy sessions in a subgroup of initially nonverbal preschoolers with intellectual disabilities that included only children with Down syndrome (DS). In this reanalysis of the dataset involving only the participants with DS, we found that more therapy led to larger spoken vocabularies at posttreatment because it increased children’s canonical syllabic communication and receptive vocabulary growth early in the treatment phase.