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PARENT-MEDIATED INTERVENTION FOR YOUNG CHILDREN WITH SPEECH AND LANGUAGE DELAY: THE ROLE OF PARENTAL RESPONSIVENESS, HOME-BASED STIMULATION, AND EARLY COMMUNICATION SUPPORT
Abstract
Early speech and language delay may restrict children's ability to communicate needs, participate socially, regulate behavior, and benefit fully from later learning opportunities. Because direct clinical services occupy only a small proportion of a child's everyday life, caregiver participation has become an important means of extending communication support into naturally occurring family interactions. This integrative critical review synthesizes peer-reviewed international research published from 2022 through August 2026 on parent-mediated intervention for young children with speech and language delays, with particular attention to parental responsiveness, routine-embedded home stimulation, and early communication support. Systematic and scoping reviews, controlled intervention studies, longitudinal studies, and research on fidelity, dosage, cultural adaptation, telepractice, and caregiver engagement were prioritized. Across the evidence base, increased language quantity alone does not adequately account for improvement. More consistent mechanisms include contingent caregiver responses, reciprocal conversational turns, expansion of child utterances, focused stimulation, developmentally calibrated modeling, and repeated opportunities for meaningful communication. Daily routines can distribute practice across contexts and support generalization, whereas coaching, modeling, feedback, and fidelity monitoring help caregivers translate intervention principles into practice. Important uncertainties remain regarding receptive-language outcomes, maintenance, dosage, caregiver burden, multilingual implementation, cultural fit, and shared decision making. To organize these findings, this review proposes the Responsive-Routine-Support (RRS) Framework, integrating interaction quality, routine-based learning opportunities, and sustained professional-family support. It also distinguishes coaching dose from caregiver-child interaction dose. Future work should test precision family-mediated approaches that match intervention components, intensity, delivery format, and caregiver support to the needs of individual children and families.
Keywords
References
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.20961/jod.v6i2.126636
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