190.8
RAPID TRAINING-DRIVEN IMPROVEMENT IN LANGUAGE ABILITY
IN AUTISTIC AND OTHER PDD CHILDREN.
P. Tallal*, G. Saunders, S. Miller, W. M. Jenkins,
A. Protopapas, and M. M. Merzenich.
Scientific Learning Corporation, San Francisco, CA 94104;
CMBN, Rutgers Univ, Newark NJ 07102; Keck Center,
UCSF, San Francisco, CA 94143.
We recently reported a major success in applying adaptive training
procedures disguised as computer games to 5- to 12-year-
old specifically language impaired children. Severn hierarchical
exercises were designed to improve aural phonetic reception
in these children, and to generalize their improved aural
reception skills to a all aspects of language. With training,
speech reception was markedly clarified and language comprehension
thereby improved (Science 271:78-84, 1996).
In extension, training was applied to a population of 28
pervasively developmentally disabled (PDD) children
(10 autistic; 18 NOS). Children worked at the same seven
computer-guided adaptive training exercises for 100 min/day
for 120-60 days. Most PDD children made major gains in acoustic
and phonological reception and in language comprehension,
as mesaured by score improvements in standard pre- vs post-training
tests of these abilities (eg., Token Test, GFW) were about 1.75.
In parallel, CELF and TOLD language battery quotients improved
by > 1 SD in about 80% of trained PDD children. Interestingly,
large improvements in both receptive and expressive battery
quotients were recorded; Z score changes averaged 1.3 for receptive
LQs and 1.1 for expressive LQs, respectively.
These studies show that major gains in language abilities can
be very rapidly achieved in at least most of these severely impaired
children by computer-guided training targeting fundamental
acoustic and speech reception abilities.
Research supported by Scientific Learning Corporation.