Valentina Cofelice

Dr. Valentina Cofelice

Rehabilitation center "IUVENIA", Morcone (BN) Italy

Research Focus & Metrics

Academic Career Length

6Years (2021-Present)

(Calculated once Scilit publication data is synced: current year − year of first publication + 1)

Representative Publications

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23 March 2021 in Brain Sciences
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
PDF file
SRSara Rinaldi
Sara Rinaldi
MCMaria Cristina Caselli
Maria Cristina Caselli
Valentina CofeliceValentina Cofelice
Valentina Cofelice
SDSimonetta D'Amico
Simonetta D'Amico
ACAnna Giulia De Cagno
Anna Giulia De Cagno
Pierluigi ZoccolottiPierluigi Zoccolotti
Pierluigi Zoccolotti
Background. Language disorder is the most frequent developmental disorder in childhood and it has a significant negative impact on children’s development. The goal of the present review was to systematically analyze the effectiveness of interventions in children with developmental language disorder (DLD) from an evidence-based perspective. Methods. We considered systematic reviews, meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials (RCTs), control group cohort studies on any type of intervention aimed at improving children’s skills in the phono-articulatory, phonological, semantic-lexical, and morpho-syntactic fields in preschool and primary school children (up to eight years of age) that were diagnosed with DLD. We identified 27 full-length studies, 26 RCT and one review. Results. Early intensive intervention in three- and four-year-old children has a positive effect on phonological expressive and receptive skills and acquisitions are maintained in the medium term. Less evidence is available on the treatment of expressive vocabulary (and no evidence on receptive vocabulary). Intervention on morphological and syntactic skills has effective results on expressive (but not receptive) skills; however, a number of inconsistent results have also been reported. Only one study reports a positive effect of treatment on inferential narrative skills. Limited evidence is also available on the treatment of meta-phonological skills. More studies investigated the effectiveness of interventions on general language skills, which now appears as a promising area of investigation, even though results are not all consistent. Conclusions. The effectiveness of interventions over expressive and receptive phonological skills, morpho-syntactic skills, as well as inferential skills in narrative context underscores the importance that these trainings be implemented in children with DLD.