scholarly journals The Complex Relation between Executive Functions and Language in Preschoolers with Developmental Language Disorders

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (5) ◽  
pp. 1772 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Marini ◽  
Barbara Piccolo ◽  
Livia Taverna ◽  
Moira Berginc ◽  
Martina Ozbič
Keyword(s):  
Executive Functions ◽  
Language Disorders ◽  
Developmental Language Disorders ◽  
Complex Relation ◽  
Narrative Skills ◽  
Rehabilitation Programs ◽  
Narrative Production ◽  
Linguistic Skills ◽  
Digit Recall ◽  
The Relationship

Backgrounds: The relationship between linguistic difficulties and cognitive impairments in children with developmental language disorders (DLDs) is receiving growing interest in international research. Executive functions (EF) appear to be weak in these children. The current investigation aims at exploring the relationship between difficulties in two components of EF (i.e., updating and inhibition) and the linguistic and narrative skills of 16 DLD preschoolers matched with 24 typically developing peers. Methods: Updating skills were tested by administering the forward and backward digit recall subtests of the Wechsler Scales, while children’s inhibition abilities were assessed by completion of Developmental Neuropsychological Assessment (NEPSY-II) inhibition tasks. Information on the linguistic skills of the participants was collected through a set of subtests included in the Batteria per la Valutazione del Linguaggio in bambini dai 4 ai 12 anni (Batteria per la Valutazione del Linguaggio; BVL_4-12), assessing articulatory and phonological discrimination skills, lexical production/comprehension, grammatical production/comprehension, and narrative production skills. Results: Findings revealed that DLD children performed significantly lower than their peers on both updating and inhibitory tasks. Linguistic difficulties were found in the DLD group on articulatory/phonological skills, grammatical production/comprehension, and lexical informativeness on narrative production. Measures of EF correlated with linguistic and narrative measures. Conclusion: The current study confirms a significant association between DLD’s performances on EF and displayed linguistic skills, suggesting the need to include the assessment of executive functions to target early intervention rehabilitation programs for children with DLDs.

scholarly journals A new perspective on referentiality in elicited narratives: Introduction to the Special Issue

2021 ◽  
pp. 014272372110623
Author(s):  
Natalia Gagarina ◽  
Ute Bohnacker
Keyword(s):  
Language Disorders ◽  
Comparative Investigation ◽  
Assessment Instrument ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Story Grammar ◽  
Developmental Language Disorders ◽  
Narrative Skills ◽  
Referential Expressions ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
The Impact

This special issue investigates the use of referential expressions in elicited picture-based narratives by children with and without developmental language disorders, across a range of languages and language combinations. All contributions use the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN, Gagarina et al. 2012, 2019). The studies featured in this issue cover monolingual and bilingual children aged 4–11 years, but focus mainly on age 4–7, a period in a child’s life where great strides are made in the development of narrative skills. This collection of papers offers a new perspective on referentiality for several reasons: all studies use the same stimuli and by and large the same procedure for the elicitation of narratives. The stimuli, four picture-based stories, are controlled for comparability of protagonists, plot and story structure. They were designed as a ‘visual’ representation of a multidimensional model of story grammar. This methodological and theoretical base allows for a comparative investigation of referentiality (including reference introduction, maintenance and reintroduction) in narratives, across languages and populations. This introduction addresses theoretical aspects of referentiality in decontextualised discourse and reviews the literature regarding the impact of language-specific referential systems and the age and path of acquisition in typically developing children and children with developmental language disorders. We also discuss methodological aspects of eliciting referentiality in narratives in detail. This introduction thus seeks explanations for the diverse and sometimes contradictory empirical results regarding children’s mastery of referentiality. Finally, an overview of the contributions in the special issue is given.

scholarly journals Linguistic Skills in Bilingual Children With Developmental Language Disorders: A Pilot Study

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Marini ◽  
Paola Sperindè ◽  
Isabella Ruta ◽  
Christian Savegnago ◽  
Francesco Avanzini
Keyword(s):  
Pilot Study ◽  
Language Disorders ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Developmental Language Disorders ◽  
Linguistic Skills

scholarly journals Variables influencing executive functioning in preschool hearing-impaired children implanted within 24 months of age: an observational cohort study

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Nicastri ◽  
Ilaria Giallini ◽  
Martina Amicucci ◽  
Laura Mariani ◽  
Marco de Vincentiis ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Executive Functions ◽  
Spatial Working Memory ◽  
Rank Correlation ◽  
Deaf Children ◽  
Rehabilitation Programs ◽  
Hearing Parents ◽  
Observational Cohort ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Impaired Children ◽  
Better Than

Abstract Purpose Executive Functions (EFs) are fundamental to every aspect of life. The present study was implemented to evaluate factors influencing their development in a group of preschools orally educated profoundly deaf children of hearing parents, who received CI within 2 years of age. Methods Twenty-five preschool CI children were tested using the Battery for Assessment of Executive Functions (BAFE) to assess their flexibility, inhibition, and non-verbal visuo-spatial working memory skills. The percentage of children performing in normal range was reported for each of the EF subtests. Mann–Whitney and Kruskal–Wallis were performed to assess differences between gender, listening mode, and degree of parents’ education subgroups. The Spearman Rank Correlation Coefficient was calculated to investigate the relationship between EF scores of audiological and linguistic variables. Results Percentages ranging from 76 to 92% of the children reached adequate EF scores at BAFE. Significant relations (p < 0.05) were found between EFs and early intervention, listening, and linguistic skills. Furthermore, CI children from families with higher education level performed better at the response shifting, inhibitory control, and attention flexibility tasks. Economic income correlated significantly with flexibility and inhibitory skills. Females performed better than males only in the attention flexibility task. Conclusions The present study is one of the first to focus attention on the development of EFs in preschool CI children, providing an initial understanding of the characteristics of EFs at the age when these skills emerge. Clinical practice must pay increasing attention to these aspects which are becoming the new emerging challenge of rehabilitation programs.

The relationship between rumination and executive functions: A meta-analysis

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 23-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergiu P. Vălenaș ◽  
◽  
Aurora Szentágotai-Tătar ◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Executive Functions ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
The Relationship

scholarly journals Task Monitoring and Working Memory as Executive Components Predictive of General and Specific Academic Achievements in 6–9-Year-Old Children

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (13) ◽  
pp. 6681
Author(s):  
Alberto Quílez-Robres ◽  
Nieves Moyano ◽  
Alejandra Cortés-Pascual
Keyword(s):  
Academic Achievement ◽  
Working Memory ◽  
Academic Performance ◽  
Executive Functions ◽  
Language Arts ◽  
Memory Task ◽  
Academic Achievements ◽  
Predictive Role ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
The Relationship

Academic achievement has been linked to executive functions. However, it is necessary to clarify the different predictive role that executive functions have on general and specific academic achievement and to determine the most predictive executive factor of this academic achievement. The relationship and predictive role between executive functions and their components (initiative, working memory, task monitoring, organization of materials, flexibility, emotional control, inhibition, self-monitoring) with academic achievement are analyzed in this study, both globally and specifically in the areas of Language Arts and Mathematics, in 133 students from 6 to 9 years of age. The relationship obtained in Pearson’s correlation analysis does not differ substantially between overall achievement (r = 0.392) and specific achievement (r = 0.361, r = 0.361), but task monitoring (r = 0.531, r = 0.455, r = 0.446) and working memory (r = 0.512, r = 0.475, r = 0.505) had a greater relationship with general and specific achievement. Finally, regression analyses based on correlation results indicate that executive functions predict general academic performance (14.7%) and specific performance (12.3%, 12.2%) for Language Arts and Mathematics, respectively. Furthermore, working memory and task supervision represent 32.5% of general academic performance, 25.5% of performance in Language Arts, and 27.1% of performance in Mathematics. In conclusion, this study yielded exploratory data on the possible executive functions (task supervision and working memory) responsible for good general academic achievements and specific academic achievements in Mathematics and Language Arts.

scholarly journals Study of the Interaction between Executive Function and Adaptive Behavior at School in Girls with Fragile X Syndrome

Genes ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 1108
Author(s):  
Lorena Joga-Elvira ◽  
Jennifer Martinez-Olmo ◽  
María-Luisa Joga ◽  
Carlos Jacas ◽  
Ana Roche-Martínez ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Executive Function ◽  
Executive Functions ◽  
Fragile X Syndrome ◽  
Adaptive Behavior ◽  
Neuropsychological Tests ◽  
Rating Scale ◽  
Fragile X ◽  
School Setting ◽  
Control Group ◽  
The Relationship

The aim of this research is to analyze the relationship between executive functions and adaptive behavior in girls with Fragile X syndrome (FXS) in the school setting. This study is part of a larger investigation conducted at the Hospital Parc Tauli in Sabadell. The sample consists of a total of 40 girls (26 with FXS and 14 control) aged 7–16 years, who were administered different neuropsychological tests (WISC-V, NEPSY-II, WCST, TOL) and questionnaires answered by teachers (ABAS-II, BRIEF 2, ADHD Rating Scale). The results show that there is a greater interaction between some areas of executive function (cognitive flexibility, auditory attention, and visual abstraction capacity) and certain areas of adaptive behavior (conceptual, practical, social, and total domains) in the FXS group than in the control group. These results suggest that an alteration in the executive functions was affecting the daily functioning of the girls with FXS to a greater extent.

Designing measures for profiling and genotype/phenotype studies of individuals with genetic syndromes or developmental language disorders

2005 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
CAROLYN B. MERVIS ◽  
BYRON F. ROBINSON
Keyword(s):  
Language Disorders ◽  
Target Population ◽  
Cognitive Profiles ◽  
Genetic Syndromes ◽  
Developmental Language Disorders ◽  
Measurement Issues ◽  
Special Measurement ◽  
Ideal Measure ◽  
Infants And Young Children ◽  
The Ideal

Accurate phenotypic description is critical for the success of studies of the genetic basis for developmental language disorders. An important purpose of such a phenotypic description is to differentiate the language and associated cognitive profiles of syndromes or other developmental language disorders with diverse genotypes. In this paper we consider six measurement issues relevant to genotype/phenotype research and profiling: (a) Who is the target population? (b) What is the “ideal” measure of a single component of language? (c) What is the “ideal” measure(s) for quantifying the language (or language and cognitive) profile for a particular syndrome or disorder? (d) What are the special measurement issues for infants and young children? (e) How do we develop a profile? (f) What are the unresolved issues?

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