scholarly journals Working memory training enhances complex syntax in children with Developmental Language Disorder

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-35
Author(s):  
Hélène Delage ◽  
Emily Stanford ◽  
Stephanie Durrleman
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Potential Benefit ◽  
Language Disorder ◽  
Memory Training ◽  
Typical Development ◽  
Direct Effects ◽  
Developmental Language Disorder ◽  
Syntactic Structures ◽  
Complex Syntax ◽  
Sentence Repetition

Abstract Linguistic deficits attested in children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) have been explained in terms of limitations in working memory (WM). The goal of this research is to assess whether a tailored WM program can improve the syntactic abilities of children with DLD and those with typical development (TD). We created a novel iPad application consisting of five activities specifically designed to train the components of WM that have been shown to be the most predictive of performance on tests assessing complex syntax. Thirty-two children with DLD (M = 9;0) and 18 with TD (M = 8;5) followed the WM training (lasting 12 hours). Results show significant improvement in verbal WM (direct effects) in both TD and DLD groups, and in sentence repetition (transfer effects) in the DLD group, with the most pronounced improvements observed for complex syntactic structures. This progression is not observed for 38 age-matched children of the same age who followed an alternative, global scholastic training (20 DLD, 18 TD), which proves the specific efficacy of our WM training. The logical next step will be to incorporate the training into the therapy of children with DLD in order to reinforce the potential benefit of their interventions.

scholarly journals Relationship between working memory and complex syntax in children with Developmental Language Disorder

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 600-632 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hélène DELAGE ◽  
Ulrich Hans FRAUENFELDER
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Language Disorder ◽  
Syntactic Complexity ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Developmental Language Disorder ◽  
Complex Sentences ◽  
Complex Syntax ◽  
French Speaking ◽  
Predictive Relationships ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractSome theories of Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) explain the linguistic deficits observed in terms of limitations in non-linguistic cognitive systems such as working memory. The goal of this research is to clarify the relationship between working memory and the processing of complex sentences by exploring the performance of 28 French-speaking children with DLD aged five to fourteen years and 48 typically developing children of the same age in memory and linguistic tasks. We identified predictive relationships between working memory and the comprehension and repetition of complex sentences in both groups. As for syntactic measures in spontaneous language, it is the complex spans that explain the major part of the variance in the control children. In children with DLD, however, simple spans are predictive of these syntactic measures. Our results thus reveal a robust relationship between working memory and syntactic complexity, with clinical implications for the treatment of children with DLD.

Do Children With Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) Have Difficulties With Interference Control, Visuospatial Working Memory, and Selective Attention? Developmental Patterns and the Role of Severity and Persistence of DLD

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (9) ◽  
pp. 3036-3050
Author(s):  
Elma Blom ◽  
Tessel Boerma
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Selective Attention ◽  
Language Disorder ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Developmental Language Disorder ◽  
Visuospatial Working Memory ◽  
Interference Control ◽  
Developmental Patterns ◽  
Search Tasks ◽  
The Impact

Purpose Many children with developmental language disorder (DLD) have weaknesses in executive functioning (EF), specifically in tasks testing interference control and working memory. It is unknown how EF develops in children with DLD, if EF abilities are related to DLD severity and persistence, and if EF weaknesses expand to selective attention. This study aimed to address these gaps. Method Data from 78 children with DLD and 39 typically developing (TD) children were collected at three times with 1-year intervals. At Time 1, the children were 5 or 6 years old. Flanker, Dot Matrix, and Sky Search tasks tested interference control, visuospatial working memory, and selective attention, respectively. DLD severity was based on children's language ability. DLD persistence was based on stability of the DLD diagnosis. Results Performance on all tasks improved in both groups. TD children outperformed children with DLD on interference control. No differences were found for visuospatial working memory and selective attention. An interference control gap between the DLD and TD groups emerged between Time 1 and Time 2. Severity and persistence of DLD were related to interference control and working memory; the impact on working memory was stronger. Selective attention was unrelated to DLD severity and persistence. Conclusions Age and DLD severity and persistence determine whether or not children with DLD show EF weaknesses. Interference control is most clearly impaired in children with DLD who are 6 years and older. Visuospatial working memory is impaired in children with severe and persistent DLD. Selective attention is spared.

Sentence Repetition: A Clinical Marker for Developmental Language Disorder in Danish

2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (12) ◽  
pp. 4450-4463
Author(s):  
Rikke Vang Christensen
Keyword(s):  
Language Disorder ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Developmental Language Disorder ◽  
Older Children ◽  
Likelihood Ratios ◽  
Clinical Marker ◽  
Sentence Repetition ◽  
Good Identification ◽  
Syntactic Properties

Purpose The aim of the study was to explore the potential of performance on a Danish sentence repetition (SR) task—including specific morphological and syntactic properties—to identify difficulties in children with developmental language disorder (DLD) relative to typically developing (TD) children. Furthermore, the potential of the task as a clinical marker for Danish DLD was explored. Method SR performance of children with DLD aged 5;10–14;1 (years;months; n = 27) and TD children aged 5;3–13;4 ( n = 87) was investigated. Results Compared to TD same-age peers, children with DLD were less likely to repeat the sentences accurately but more likely to make ungrammatical errors with respect to verb inflection and use of determiners and personal pronouns. Younger children with DLD also produced more word order errors that their TD peers. Furthermore, older children with DLD performed less accurately than younger TD peers, indicating that the SR task taps into morphosyntactic areas of particular difficulty for Danish children with DLD. The classification accuracy associated with SR performance showed high levels of sensitivity and specificity (> 90%) and likelihood ratios indicating good identification potential for clinical and future research purposes. Conclusion SR performance has a strong potential for identifying children with DLD, also in Danish, and with a carefully designed SR task, performance has potential for revealing morphosyntactic difficulties. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.10314437

scholarly journals Lower verbalizability of visual stimuli modulates differences in estimates of working memory capacity between children with and without developmental language disorders

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 239694152094551
Author(s):  
Seçkin Arslan ◽  
Lucie Broc ◽  
Fabien Mathy
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Visual Memory ◽  
Language Disorder ◽  
Working Memory Capacity ◽  
Visual Stimuli ◽  
Memory Capacity ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Developmental Language Disorder ◽  
Typically Developing Children ◽  
Short Term

Background and aims Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) often perform below their typically developing peers on verbal memory tasks. However, the picture is less clear on visual memory tasks. Research has generally shown that visual memory can be facilitated by verbal representations, but few studies have been conducted using visual materials that are not easy to verbalize. Therefore, we attempted to construct non-verbalizable stimuli to investigate the impact of working memory capacity. Method and results We manipulated verbalizability in visual span tasks and tested whether minimizing verbalizability could help reduce visual recall performance differences across children with and without developmental language disorder. Visuals that could be easily verbalized or not were selected based on a pretest with non-developmental language disorder young adults. We tested groups of children with developmental language disorder (N = 23) and their typically developing peers (N = 65) using these high and low verbalizable classes of visual stimuli. The memory span of the children with developmental language disorder varied across the different stimulus conditions, but critically, although their storage capacity for visual information was virtually unimpaired, the children with developmental language disorder still had difficulty in recalling verbalizable images with simple drawings. Also, recalling complex (galaxy) images with low verbalizability proved difficult in both groups of children. An item-based analysis on correctly recalled items showed that higher levels of verbalizability enhanced visual recall in the typically developing children to a greater extent than the children with developmental language disorder. Conclusions and clinical implication: We suggest that visual short-term memory in typically developing children might be mediated with verbal encoding to a larger extent than in children with developmental language disorder, thus leading to poorer performance on visual capacity tasks. Our findings cast doubts on the idea that short-term storage impairments are limited to the verbal domain, but they also challenge the idea that visual tasks are essentially visual. Therefore, our findings suggest to clinicians working with children experiencing developmental language difficulties that visual memory deficits may not necessarily be due to reduced non-verbal skills but may be due to the high amount of verbal cues in visual stimuli, from which they do not benefit in comparison to their peers.

scholarly journals Comprehension of Welcher -Questions in German-Speaking Children With and Without Developmental Language Disorder

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Anne Dorothée Roesch ◽  
Vasiliki Chondrogianni
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Language Disorder ◽  
Working Memory Capacity ◽  
Question Type ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Developmental Language Disorder ◽  
Typically Developing Children ◽  
Phonological Working Memory ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
German Speaking

Purpose This study examined whether monolingual German-speaking preschool children with developmental language disorder (DLD) were facilitated by the presence of case-marking cues in their interpretation of German subject and object welcher (“which”)-questions, as reported for their typically developing peers. We also examined whether knowledge of case-marking and/or phonological working memory modulated children's ability to revise early assigned interpretations of ambiguous questions. Method Sixty-three monolingual German-speaking children with and without DLD aged between 4;0 and 5;11 (years;months) participated in an offline picture selection task targeting the comprehension of welcher -questions in German. We manipulated question type (subject, object), case-marking transparency, and case-marking position within the question (sentence-initial/-final). Results The typically developing children outperformed the children with DLD across conditions, and all children performed better on subject than on object wh -questions. Transparent and early cues elicited higher accuracy than late-arriving cues. For the DLD children, their working memory capacity explained their inability to revise early assigned interpretations to ambiguous questions, whereas their knowledge of case did not. Conclusions The results suggest that disambiguating morphosyntactic cues can only partly facilitate comprehension of German welcher -questions in children with DLD, whose poor phonological working memory rather than their knowledge of case-marking mediates performance on these structures.

Exploring the Use of Parent and Teacher Questionnaires to Screen for Language Disorders in Bilingual Children

2020 ◽  
pp. 027112142094230
Author(s):  
Amy S. Pratt ◽  
Ashley M. Adams ◽  
Elizabeth D. Peña ◽  
Lisa M. Bedore
Keyword(s):  
Language Disorder ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Second Grade ◽  
Typical Development ◽  
Developmental Language Disorder ◽  
English Bilingual ◽  
Language Knowledge ◽  
Teacher Reports ◽  
Report Measure

We explore the classification accuracy of a parent and teacher report measure, the Inventory to Assess Language Knowledge (ITALK), to screen for developmental language disorder (DLD) in bilingual children. Participants included 120 Spanish English bilingual children with typical development (TD) and 19 bilingual children with DLD, ranging in age from 5 to 8 years old. Parents’ and teachers’ reports correlated moderately with each other and significantly predicted children’s performance on language-specific measures of morphosyntax and semantics. Results yielded sensitivity of .90 and specificity of .63 when using a composite of parent and teacher reports in Spanish and English. Examination of structure loadings in follow-up analyses by grade showed that teachers’ report of English and parents’ report of Spanish were the strongest predictors of impairment in kindergarten. In second grade, the strongest predictors were parent and teacher reports in English. Implications for referral and identification are discussed.

scholarly journals Sustained Attention in Developmental Language Disorder and Its Relation to Working Memory and Language

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (12) ◽  
pp. 4096-4108
Author(s):  
Erin Smolak ◽  
Karla K. McGregor ◽  
Tim Arbisi-Kelm ◽  
Nichole Eden
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Sustained Attention ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Spatial Working Memory ◽  
Language Disorder ◽  
Language Ability ◽  
Developmental Language Disorder ◽  
Language Abilities ◽  
Visual Spatial ◽  
Visual Spatial Working Memory

Purpose Based on evidence of deficits in domain-general cognitive abilities associated with developmental language disorder (DLD), the current study examined sustained attention performance in children with DLD compared to children with typical language development (TLD) and the interrelations between visual–spatial sustained attention, visual–spatial working memory, and language abilities across groups. Method Participants included 67 children at 7 years of age: 25 children with DLD (13 girls and 12 boys) and 42 children with TLD (23 girls and 19 boys). We assessed children's visual–spatial sustained attention, visual–spatial working memory, and language ability on a test of narrative language. Result Children with DLD scored significantly below their peers on a measure of visual–spatial sustained attention. Significant intercorrelations were observed between sustained attention, working memory, and language ability within the DLD group, but no correlations were observed between these measures in the TLD group. Conclusion Children with DLD have domain-general deficits in sustained attention, and correlational results have implications for whether and how language abilities are supported by domain-general cognition in both typical and disordered development.

scholarly journals Sentence Repetition as a Clinical Marker of Developmental Language Disorder: Evidence From Arabic

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Juhayna Taha ◽  
Vesna Stojanovik ◽  
Emma Pagnamenta
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Language Disorder ◽  
Population Based ◽  
Scoring Methods ◽  
Developmental Language Disorder ◽  
Function Words ◽  
Sentence Repetition ◽  
Palestinian Arabic ◽  
Arabic Speaking ◽  
Repetition Task

Purpose: Research on the typical and impaired grammatical acquisition of Arabic is limited. This study systematically examined the morphosyntactic abilities of Arabic-speaking children with and without developmental language disorder (DLD) using a novel sentence repetition task. The usefulness of the task as an indicator of DLD in Arabic was determined. Method: A LITMUS (Language Impairment Testing in Multilingual Settings) sentence repetition task was developed in Palestinian Arabic (LITMUS-SR-PA-72) and administered to 30 children with DLD ( M = 61.50 months, SD = 11.27) and 60 age-matched typically developing (TD) children ( M = 63.85 months, SD = 10.16). The task targeted grammatical structures known to be problematic for Arabic-speaking children with DLD (language specific) and children with DLD across languages (language independent). Responses were scored using binary, error, and structural scoring methods. Results: Children with DLD scored below TD children on the LITMUS-SR-PA-72, in general, and in the repetition of language-specific and language-independent structures. The frequency of morphosyntactic errors was higher in the DLD group relative to the TD group. Despite the large similarity of the type of morphosyntactic errors between the two groups, some atypical errors were exclusively produced by the DLD group. The three scoring methods showed good diagnostic power in the discrimination between children with DLD and children without DLD. Conclusions: Sentence repetition was an area of difficulty for Palestinian Arabic–speaking children with DLD. The DLD group demonstrated difficulties with language-specific and language-independent structures, particularly complex sentences with noncanonical word order. Most grammatical errors made by the DLD group resembled those of the TD group and were mostly omissions or substitutions of grammatical affixes or omissions of function words. SR appears to hold promise as a good indicator for the presence or absence of DLD in Arabic. Further validation of these findings using population-based studies is warranted. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.16968043

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