From implicit to explicit language knowledge in intervention: Introduction to the Special Issue on intervention and metalanguage

The Special Issue is themed on intervention programs which set educational and clinical goals and use explicit language instruction to achieve them. This introduction to the Special Issue explores the non-obvious relationship between intervention, metalinguistics and the study of developmental psycholinguistics. Intervention is typically designed to remedy and accelerate processes that are assumed to be naturally occurring under optimal circumstances. Beyond employing intervention to test hypotheses in developmental cognitive science, most intervention studies are explicitly constructed to improve impaired or non-optimal language skills. The introduction reviews the two major themes of this issue: the problematic yet uniquely efficacious role of intervention studies in gauging the variables that can be modified to improve language and literacy skills; and the origins and nature of metalinguistic awareness in development. The five papers appearing in this Special Issue each highlight a different facet of the relationship between intervention and metalanguage.