# Interactive book reading to accelerate word learning by children with SLI

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS LAWRENCE · 2020 · $305,227

## Abstract

Children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) are slower to learn new words than their peers, placing them
at risk for academic failure. Our long-term goal is to develop an effective word learning treatment for
kindergarten children with SLI, thereby improving their academic and vocational outcomes. During the prior
funding period, we successfully taught new words to children with SLI via interactive book reading, a treatment
involving an adult reading a storybook to a child and deviating from the text to teach new words. We identified
the appropriate intensity of the treatment and showed that children with SLI can learn an appropriate number of
words by the end of treatment. However, this successful support of short-term word learning revealed new
challenges that must be overcome in this renewal to continue to understand and improve long-term word
learning by children with SLI. Thus, a second preliminary clinical trial involving 60 kindergarten children with
SLI is proposed in this renewal. Aim 1 addresses the challenge that newly learned words were forgotten once
treatment was withdrawn. We attempt to buffer forgetting by comparing different amounts of testing during
interactive book reading (low vs. mid vs high testing). Incorporating testing into training is a well-established
and highly replicated means of reducing forgetting by adults and typically developing children. Aim 1 will
determine whether testing can be harnessed to buffer forgetting by children with SLI under real world
conditions. Aims 2 and 3 address the challenge that not all children benefitted equally from interactive book
reading. In Aim 2, we identify pre-treatment characteristics of children with SLI that are associated with the
slope of learning during treatment or the slope of forgetting post-treatment. Moreover, we select a pre-
treatment battery that samples a wide array of skills likely to be associated with learning (language processing,
working memory, and episodic memory) or forgetting (learning at last treatment, decay rate). Aim 2 will provide
a foundation for predicting which children will benefit from interactive book reading and will identify which skills
are major barriers to long-term word learning by children with SLI. In Aim 3, we classify each child’s response
at the end of treatment (learner vs. non-learner) and at the end of post-treatment monitoring (rememberer vs.
forgetter) and then examine earlier performance to determine when treatment and post-treatment outcomes
can be predicted. This yields empirically based benchmarks for progress that can be used later to tailor the
treatment to individual children and establishes the stability of learning and forgetting over time. Overall, this
research advances a promising treatment to effectively overcome the significant word learning challenges
faced by children with SLI and reveals the contribution of learning and forgetting to language normalization by
children with SLI. The results will have impact be...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9932958
- **Project number:** 5R01DC012824-08
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS LAWRENCE
- **Principal Investigator:** Holly L Storkel
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $305,227
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2013-03-01 → 2023-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9932958

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9932958, Interactive book reading to accelerate word learning by children with SLI (5R01DC012824-08). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-27 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9932958. Licensed CC0.

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