scholarly journals Efficacy of the Treatment of Developmental Language Disorder: A Systematic Review

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 407
Author(s):  
Sara Rinaldi ◽  
Maria Cristina Caselli ◽  
Valentina Cofelice ◽  
Simonetta D’Amico ◽  
Anna Giulia De Cagno ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Language Disorder ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Receptive Vocabulary ◽  
Primary School Children ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Developmental Language Disorder ◽  
Expressive Vocabulary ◽  
Phonological Skills ◽  
Syntactic Skills ◽  
Positive Effect

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.

scholarly journals Reciprocal relationships between lexical and syntactic skills of children with Developmental Language Disorder and the role of executive functions

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 239694151986398 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elma Blom ◽  
Tessel Boerma
Keyword(s):  
Language Disorder ◽  
Receptive Vocabulary ◽  
Developmental Language Disorder ◽  
Interference Control ◽  
Lexical Development ◽  
Verbal Abilities ◽  
Syntactic Skills ◽  
Syntactic Development ◽  
Lexical Skills

Background and aims Recent research indicates that children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) often also score lower than their peers with typical development (TD) on tasks testing nonverbal executive functioning (EF). This study investigated whether there is evidence that children with DLD use linguistic and EF resources to support their lexical and syntactic development. Three questions were addressed: (1) How do children with DLD develop in the domains of lexicon and syntax, and how does their development compare to TD controls? (2) To what extent do children with DLD show reciprocal relations between lexical and syntactic skills, and how does this compare to TD controls? (3) Is EF ability related to DLD children’s lexical and syntactic skills, and how does this compare to TD controls? Methods Data from 117 children (NDLD = 78; NTD = 39) were collected three times with yearly intervals. At time 1, the children were 5 or 6 years old. Standardized receptive vocabulary and sentence repetition tests measured lexicon and syntax, respectively. Nonverbal EF tasks tested selective attention, interference control and working memory. Cross-lagged analyses were conducted to determine the direction of relationships. Results Both groups showed stable lexical and syntactic growth. In children with DLD, but not in TD controls, syntactic skills predicted lexical skills. In the DLD group, EF predicted lexical skills. Reversely, in the TD group, lexical skills predicted EF. Conclusions The results of this study are consistent with the hypothesis that the lexical development of children with DLD is supported by both their verbal abilities in the domain of syntax and their nonverbal EF abilities. Implications Interventions that improve the syntactic and EF abilities of children with DLD may have spreading effects and positively impact on word learning by children with DLD.

scholarly journals Vocabulary Abilities and Parents’ Emotional Regulation Predict Emotional Regulation in School-Age Children but Not Adolescents With and Without Developmental Language Disorder

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mari Aguilera ◽  
Nadia Ahufinger ◽  
Núria Esteve-Gibert ◽  
Laura Ferinu ◽  
Llorenç Andreu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Children And Adolescents ◽  
Middle Childhood ◽  
Emotional Regulation ◽  
Language Disorder ◽  
Receptive Vocabulary ◽  
School Age Children ◽  
School Age ◽  
Developmental Language Disorder ◽  
Expressive Vocabulary ◽  
The Impact

A comprehensive approach, including social and emotional affectations, has been recently proposed as an important framework to understand Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). There is an increasing considerable interest in knowing how language and emotion are related, and as far as we know, the role of the emotional regulation (ER) of parents of children with and without DLD, and their impact on their children’s ER is still unknown. The main aims of this study are to advance our knowledge of ER in school-age children and adolescents with and without DLD, to analyze the predictive value of expressive and receptive vocabulary on ER in school-age children and adolescents, and to explore parental ER and their effect on their children’s and adolescents’ ER. To cover all objectives, we carried out three studies. In the first and second study, expressive and receptive vocabulary were assessed in wave 1, and ER (Emotional Regulation Checklist -ERC- for children and Emotion Regulation Scale -DERS- for adolescents) was assessed in wave 2, 4 years later. Participants in the first study consisted of two groups of school-aged children (13 had DLD and 20 were typically developing children -TD). Participants in the second study consisted of two groups of adolescents (16 had DLD and 16 were TD adolescents). In the third study, the ER of 65 of the parents of the children and adolescents from study 1 were assessed during wave 2 via self-reporting the DERS questionnaire. Results showed no significant differences in ER between DLD and TD groups neither in middle childhood nor in adolescence. Concerning vocabulary and ER, expressive language predicted ER in school-age children but not in adolescents. Finally, parental ER explained their school-age children’s ER, but this was not the case in adolescents. In conclusion, the present data indicated that expressive vocabulary has a fundamental role in ER, at least during primary school years, and adds new evidence of the impact of parents’ ER upon their children’s ER, encouraging educators and speech language pathologists to include parents’ assessments in holistic evaluations and interventions for children with language and ER difficulties.

scholarly journals Variability of input in preposition learning by preschoolers with developmental language disorder and typically-developing language

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-74
Author(s):  
Katrina Nicholas ◽  
Mary Alt ◽  
Ella Hauwiller
Keyword(s):  
High Performance ◽  
Language Disorder ◽  
Case Series ◽  
High Variability ◽  
Receptive Vocabulary ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Developmental Language Disorder ◽  
Vocabulary Skills ◽  
Series Design

The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of variability in teaching prepositions to preschoolers with typical development (TD) and developmental language disorder (DLD). Input variability during teaching can enhance learning, but is target dependent. We hypothesized that high variability of objects would improve preposition learning. We also examined other characteristics (e.g. vocabulary skills) of children who responded to treatment. We used a case series design, repeated across children ( n = 18) to contrast how preschoolers learned prepositions in conditions that manipulated variability of objects and labels across three treatment sessions. We contrasted a high versus low variability condition for objects and labels for one group of typically-developing (TD) children ( n = 6). In other groups (TD, n = 6; DLD, n = 6), we contrasted high versus low object variability only. Visual inspection and descriptive statistics were used to characterize gains. Half ( n = 3) of TD participants showed a low variability advantage for the condition that combined object and label variability. In the condition that only contrasted object variability, the majority ( n = 4) of TD participants showed a high variability advantage, compared to only two participants with DLD. In the high object variability condition, high receptive vocabulary scores were significantly correlated with high performance of learning prepositions ( rs = 0.71, p < 0.05). Combining high variability for objects and labels when teaching prepositions was not effective. However, high variability for objects can create a learning advantage for learning prepositions for children with typically developing language, but not all learners. Characteristics of different learners (e.g. receptive vocabulary scores) and language status (impaired or unimpaired) should be taken into consideration for future studies.

scholarly journals Identifying Developmental Language Disorder in Vietnamese Children

2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (5) ◽  
pp. 1452-1467 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giang T. Pham ◽  
Sonja Pruitt-Lord ◽  
Catherine E. Snow ◽  
Yen Hoang Thi Nguyen ◽  
Ben Phạm ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Language Disorder ◽  
Risk Groups ◽  
Parent Report ◽  
Developmental Language Disorder ◽  
Clinical Markers ◽  
Expressive Vocabulary ◽  
Language Performance ◽  
Language Sampling ◽  
Language Measures ◽  
Mean Length Of Utterance

Purpose Developmental language disorder (DLD), defined by low language performance despite otherwise normal development, can negatively impact children's social and academic outcomes. This study is the 1st to examine DLD in Vietnamese. To lay the foundation, we identified cases of DLD in Vietnam and explored language-specific characteristics of the disorder. Method Teacher ratings of 1,250 kindergarteners living in Hanoi, Vietnam, were used to recruit children with and without risk for DLD. One hundred four children completed direct measures of vocabulary and language sampling, and their parents completed in-depth surveys. We examined convergence and divergence across tasks to identify measures that could serve as reliable indicators of risk. Then, we compared performance on direct language measures across ability levels. Results There were positive associations between teacher and parent report and between report and direct language measures. Three groups were identified based on convergence across measures: DLD, some risk for DLD, and no risk. The DLD group performed lowest on measures of receptive and expressive vocabulary, mean length of utterance, and grammaticality. Although children with DLD exhibited a greater number of errors, the types of errors found were similar across DLD and No Risk groups. Conclusions Similar to rates found globally, 7% of the kindergarten population in Vietnam exhibited risk for DLD. Results highlight the importance of parent and teacher report and the value of multiple measures to identify DLD. We discuss potential clinical markers for DLD in the Vietnamese language and outline future directions.

scholarly journals The Association Between Screen Media Quantity, Content, and Context and Language Development

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haifa Alroqi ◽  
Ludovica Serratrice ◽  
Thea Cameron-Faulkner
Keyword(s):  
Language Development ◽  
Screen Time ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Receptive Vocabulary ◽  
Expressive Vocabulary ◽  
Older Children ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
Screen Media ◽  
Screen Use

This study investigates the influence of the quantity, content, and context of screen media use on the language development of 85 Saudi children aged 1 to 3 years. Surveys and weekly event-based diaries were employed to track children’s screen use patterns. Language development was assessed using an Arabic Communicative Development Inventory (CDI). Findings indicate that the most significant predictor of expressive and receptive vocabulary in 12- to 16-month-olds was screen media context (as measured by the frequency of interactive joint media engagements). In older children (17- to 36-month-olds), more screen time (as measured by the amount of time spent using screens, the prevalence of background TV at home, and the onset age of screen use) had the highest negative impact on expressive vocabulary and mean length of utterance. These findings support health recommendations on the negative effects of excessive screen time and the positive effects of co-viewing media with children.

A Multimodal Comparison of Emotion Categorization Abilities in Children With Developmental Language Disorder

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Daniela Bahn ◽  
Michael Vesker ◽  
Gudrun Schwarzer ◽  
Christina Kauschke
Keyword(s):  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Language Disorder ◽  
Emotion Processing ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Developmental Language Disorder ◽  
Lower Accuracy ◽  
Verbal Tasks

Purpose Current research has demonstrated that behavioral, emotional, and/or social difficulties often accompany developmental language disorder (DLD). It is an open question to what degrees such difficulties arise as consequence of impaired language and communicative skills, or whether they might also be driven by deficits in verbal and nonverbal emotion processing (e.g., the reduced ability to infer and verbalize emotional states from facial expressions). Regarding the existence of nonverbal deficits, previous research has yielded inconsistent findings. This study was aimed at gaining deeper knowledge of the basic aspects of emotion understanding in children with DLD by comparing their performance on nonverbal and verbal emotion categorization tasks to that of typically developing children. Method Two verbal tasks (Lexical Decision and Valence Decision With Emotion Terms) and two nonverbal tasks (Face Decision and Valence Decision With Facial Expressions) were designed to parallel each other as much as possible, and conducted with twenty-six 6- to 10-year-old children diagnosed with DLD. The same number of typically developed children, carefully matched by age and gender, served as a control group. Results The children with DLD showed lower performance in both verbal tasks and exhibited noticeable problems in the nonverbal emotion processing task. In particular, they achieved lower accuracy scores when they categorized faces by their valence (positive or negative), but did not differ in their ability to distinguish these faces from pictures displaying animals. Conclusions This study provides evidence for the hypothesis that problems in emotion processing in children with DLD might be multimodal. Therefore, the results support the idea of mutual influences in the development of language and emotion skills and contribute to the current debate about the domain specificity of DLD (formerly referred to as specific language impairment).

scholarly journals Online Statistical Learning in Developmental Language Disorder

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ágnes Lukács ◽  
Krisztina Sára Lukics ◽  
Dorottya Dobó
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Learning ◽  
Language Disorder ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Forced Choice ◽  
School Age Children ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Developmental Language Disorder ◽  
Combined Use ◽  
Transitional Probabilities ◽  
Online Tests

Purpose: The vulnerability of statistical learning (SL) in developmental language disorder (DLD) has mainly been demonstrated with metacognitive offline measures which give little insight into the more specific nature and timing of learning. Our aims in this study were to test SL in children with and without DLD with both online and offline measures and to compare the efficiency of SL in the visual and acoustic modalities in DLD.Method: We explored SL in school-age children with and without DLD matched on age and sex (n = 36). SL was investigated with the use of acoustic verbal and visual nonverbal segmentation tasks relying on online (reaction times and accuracy) and offline (two-alternative forced choice, 2AFC and production) measures.Results: In online measures, learning was evident in both groups in both the visual and acoustic modalities, while offline measures showed difficulties in DLD. The visual production task showed a significant learning effect in both groups, while the visual two-alternative forced choice (2AFC) and the two acoustic offline tasks only showed evidence of learning in the control group. The comparison of learning indices revealed an SL impairment in DLD, which is present in both modalities.Conclusions: Our findings suggest that children with DLD are comparable to typically developing (TD) children in their ability to extract acoustic verbal and visual nonverbal patterns that are cued only by transitional probabilities in online tasks, but they show impairments on metacognitive measures of learning. The pattern of online and offline measures implies that online tests can be more sensitive and valid indices of SL than offline tasks, and the combined use of different measures provides a better picture of learning efficiency, especially in groups where metacognitive tasks are challenging.

scholarly journals Implicit Representation of Grammatical Gender in Italian Children with Developmental Language Disorder: An Exploratory Study on Phonological and/or Syntactic Sensitivity

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caterina Artuso ◽  
Elena Fratini ◽  
Carmen Belacchi
Keyword(s):  
Phonological Processing ◽  
Language Disorder ◽  
Size Control ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Linguistic Competence ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Developmental Language Disorder ◽  
Implicit Representation ◽  
The Status ◽  
Italian Children

AbstractChildren with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) display impaired phonological and/or morpho-syntactic skills. To detect these impairments, it would be of value to devise tasks that assess specific markers of implicit linguistic competence. We administered a forced choice semantic categorization task developed in Italian (Belacchi and Cubelli in Journal of psycholinguistic research 41:295–310, 2012) for detecting the implicit use of grammatical gender markers in classifying epicenes names of animals: phonological and/or syntactic. Seventy Italian children with expressive-phonological DLD (mean age: 61.20 months) were compared with a same-size control group. Overall, the children with DLD performed more poorly than the control group. Also, the DLD participants used the phonological index to a significantly lesser extent, confirming their specific impairment in the phonological processing of words. The current study provided evidence for the status of phonological discrimination skills as a precursor of language development, and the value of using categorization tasks to assess implicit linguistic competence in children with DLD.

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