Spelling well despite developmental language disorder: what makes it possible?

Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) and Dyslexia frequently co-occur. Many studies suggest that children with Dyslexia may also struggle with oral language skills, while those with DLD may also face challenges in word decoding. Both groups of children typically exhibit deficits in phonological processing [phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming (RAN), verbal short-term memory (VSTM)] and verbal working memory (VWM). Despite the increasing number of comparative studies, few have systematically examined these overlaps in children at the early stages of literacy acquisition, and few studies have systematically assessed all oral language subsystems. This study investigates: (a) differences and similarities among children with DLD, children at Risk of Dyslexia (RfD), and typically developing children (TD) in phonological processing (phonological awareness—implicit and explicit—VSTM, RAN), VWM, oral language, and word decoding; (b) patterns of performance across groups; and (c) correlations between phonological processing and VWM skills with oral language and word decoding. The participants were 45 first graders (Mage = 6.8), equally divided into three groups (DLD, RfD, and TD children). Both special groups (DLD, RfD) performed significantly worse than the TD group across nearly all measurements. DLD children showed pronounced oral language and VSTM deficits, while RfD children primarily struggled with decoding and explicit phonological awareness. Group-specific correlations emerged. The findings are discussed in light of the theoretical models of the relationship between DLD and Dyslexia taking into account the specific developmental stage.

This research analyzed adequacy of referential expressions in the narratives of bilingual and monolingual children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) and typical language development (TLD), aiming to shed light on the relative contribution of morpho-syntactic, discourse-pragmatic, and semantic constraints. Narratives were collected from 51 children using a storytelling procedure ( MAIN – Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives). Participants were 18 bilingual Russian-Hebrew preschool children (8 with DLD), 17 monolingual Russian speakers (9 with DLD), and 16 monolingual Hebrew speakers (5 with DLD) aged 5;6–6;7. Referential expressions were coded for form (noun phrase [NP] or pronoun) and character function (Introduction or Maintenance). Analyses addressed the effects of proficiency group (TLD/DLD), language group (bilingual/monolingual), and language (Russian/Hebrew) on inadequate pronoun use and definiteness. Results demonstrated that children in all groups introduced characters using NPs. Children with DLD used more morpho-syntactically inadequate pronouns, such as incorrect gender, while both children with DLD and those with TLD used similar numbers of discourse-pragmatically inadequate pronouns. Bilinguals used more morpho-syntactically inadequate pronouns than monolinguals. In Hebrew, bilingual children with DLD omitted definite articles for character Maintenance more frequently than bilingual children with TLD and monolingual Hebrew-speaking children with DLD. Wrong gender assignment indicates that children with DLD have difficulties with morpho-syntactic constraints. Omission of definite articles for character Maintenance indicates a possibility of both morpho-syntactic and semantic difficulties that bilingual children with DLD acquiring Hebrew face. The results offer insight into the nature of the difficulty observed in bilingual children with DLD in using referential expressions.

Language sample analysis (LSA) represents an ecologically valid method for diagnosing, identifying goals, and measuring progress in children with developmental language disorder (DLD). LSA is, however, time consuming. The purpose of this study was to determine the length of sample needed to obtain reliable LSA measures for children in kindergarten and first grade with typical language (TL) and DLD using automated analyses from the Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts software. Play-based conversational language samples collected on kindergarten to first-grade children with TL (n = 21) and DLD (n = 21) from a community-based sample were analyzed. Eight LSA measures were calculated from 1-, 3-, 5-, 7-, and 10-min sample cuts and compared to 20-min samples for reliability. Reliability estimates were similar for the TL and DLD groups except for errors and omissions, which showed overall higher levels of reliability in the DLD group and reached acceptable levels at 3 min. Percent grammatical utterances were reliable at 7 min in the DLD group and not reliable in shorter samples in the TL group. The subordination index was reliable at 10 min for both groups. Number of different words reached acceptable reliability at the 3-min length for the DLD group and at the 10-min length for the TL group. Utterances and words per minute were reliable at 3 min and mean length of utterance at 7 min in both groups. Speech-language pathologists can obtain reliable LSA measures from shorter, 7-min conversational language samples from kindergarten to first-grade children with DLD. Shorter language samples may encourage increased use of LSA. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.19529287.

Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), previously known as Specific Language Impairment (SLI), is a common developmental disorder that affects both preschool and school aged children. The language characteristics of children with DLD vary considerably with the main challenge being the learning of language structures and morphosyntactic and lexical limitations (Leonard, 2014). Research has shown that when it comes to bilinguals with language deficits caution should be taken, since they may arise from impairment due to DLD but can also be caused by insufficient exposure to and limited knowledge of the target language (Reilly, Losh, Bellugi, & Wulfeck, 2004). A method that has often been used to investigate the language features of monolingual and monolingual children with DLD is to examine their narrative abilities, since narratives provide a quasi-naturalistic measure of children’s spontaneous language and reflect distinctive structural linguistic changes through childhood and adolescence. The objective of this paper is to conduct a systematic review of recent studies on the narrative skills of monolingual and bilingual pre-school and primary school children with DLD. Therefore, it focuses on 13 research articles published since 2010 until present that met the inclusion criteria set in this review. The selected studies fell under three main areas: 1) studies assessing the narrative skills of monolingual children with DLD/SLI, 2) studies comparing bilingual children of typical development and bilinguals with DLD/SLI and 3) studies comparing monolingual and bilingual children with DLD/SLI. The majority of studies reported significant differences in the narrative performance between monolinguals with and without DLD and between bilinguals with and without DLD. No significant difference is observed in the performance between monolinguals and bilinguals of typical language development, yet performance differences are noted between monolinguals with DLD and bilinguals with the same language impairment. Microstructure seems to be greatly affected by DLD with macrostructure being affected the less.

Two reasons may explain the discrepant findings regarding declarative memory in developmental language disorder (DLD) in the literature. First, standardized tests are one of the primary tools used to assess declarative memory in previous studies. It is possible they are not sensitive enough to subtle memory impairment. Second, the system underlying declarative memory is complex, and thus results may vary depending on the types of encoding and retrieval processes measured (e.g., item specific or relational) and/or task demands (e.g., recall or recognition during memory retrieval). To adopt an experimental paradigm to examine episodic memory functioning in adolescents with and without DLD, with the focus on memory recognition of item-specific and relational information. Two groups of adolescents, one with DLD (n = 23; mean age = 16.73 years) and the other without (n = 23; mean age = 16.75 years), participated in the study. The Relational and Item-Specific Encoding (RISE) paradigm was used to assess the effect of different encoding processes on episodic memory retrieval in DLD. The advantage of using the RISE task is that both item-specific and relational encoding/retrieval can be examined within the same learning paradigm. Adolescents with DLD and those with typical language development showed comparable engagement during the encoding phase. The DLD group showed significantly poorer item recognition than the comparison group. Associative recognition was not significantly different between the two groups; however, there was a non-significant trend for to be poorer in the DLD group than in the comparison group, suggesting a possible impairment in associative recognition in individuals with DLD, but to a lesser magnitude. These results indicate that adolescents with DLD have difficulty with episodic memory retrieval when stimuli are encoded and retrieved without support from contextual information. Associative recognition is relatively less affected than item recognition in adolescents with DLD.

IntroductionMazes are linguistic disfluencies such as filled pauses, repetitions, or revisions of grammatical, phonological, or lexical aspects of words that do not contribute to the meaning of a sentence. Bilingual children are believed to increase the numbers of mazes in their native or heritage language, the minority language, as they become more proficient in the second language, the societal language. Mazes may increase over time in bilingual Spanish-speaking children as they become more proficient in English, the societal language in the United States. However, current studies have not been conducted longitudinally. Higher rates of mazes in the heritage language over time may be due to changes in language proficiency and differences in processing demands in the children as they use more complex language. Moreover, children with developmental language disorder (DLD) can also present higher rates of mazes than children with typical language. Heritage speakers, therefore, are at risk of being misdiagnosed with DLD due to high rates of mazes. Currently, we do not understand what the typical rates of mazes are as heritage speakers get older and become more proficient in the societal language. The current study examined the type and frequency of Spanish mazes longitudinally in a group of 22 Spanish heritage speakers with and without DLD and determined the changes over time.MethodsA total of 11 children with typical language development (TLD) and 11 with DLD participated in this 5-year longitudinal study. Using a wordless picture book, children completed a retelling task in Spanish during the spring of each academic year (PK to 3rd grade) as part of a 5-h testing battery. Narratives were transcribed and coded for types of mazes (filled pauses, repetitions, grammatical revisions, phonological revisions, and lexical revisions).Results and conclusionThe results of the study indicate that TLD children increased their overall percentage of mazed words and utterances. The opposite pattern was observed in the DLD group, which decreased their percentage of mazed words and utterances. In contrast, both groups demonstrated a decrease in repetitions in first grade and an increase in third grade. Additionally, the TLD and DLD children decreased in the percentage of fillers in first grade and then increased in the third grade. Results suggest that maze use is quite variable in heritage speakers and does not necessarily differentiate groups. Clinicians should not rely solely on mazes to determine ability status. In fact, high use of mazes can reflect typical language development.

Language sample analysis (LSA) is a commonly recommended method of assessment for bilingual children. This systematic review and meta-analysis provides a comprehensive overview of the literature on the use of LSA to differentiate between developmental language disorder (DLD) and typical language (TL) in bilingual children. We conducted a search of several large electronic databases along with forward and backward searches and applied abstract and full-text screening procedures to identify all relevant studies. We then estimated standardized mean differences, representing the ability of LSA to differentiate between DLD and TL, using multilevel model and subgroup and moderator analyses to identify characteristics of LSA that may be associated with differences in effect size magnitude. We conducted assessments of publication bias and risk of bias by examining quality indicators for each study. The search yielded 35 articles that met the inclusion criteria. Participants ranged in age from 2;0 (years;months) to 11;9, with over 40 languages represented. Across studies, the pooled standardized mean difference indicated that children with DLD performed 0.78 SD lower on LSA measures than those with TL. Measures of morphosyntactic accuracy exhibited the largest pooled effect size. Elicitation method, language of task, and age were not associated with differences in effect size. Results of this study provide evidence of the clinical utility of LSA in differentiating between DLD and TL in bilingual children. Further research is needed to examine classification accuracy as well as task characteristics that may improve its diagnostic utility.

<b>Purpose: </b>The aim of the study was to determine the integrity of fast mapping among adults with developmental language disorder (DLD).<b>Method: </b>Forty-eight adults with DLD or typical language development (TD) were presented with 24 novel words and photos of their unfamiliar referents from the semantic categories of <i>mammal</i>, <i>bird</i>, <i>fruit</i>, or <i>insect</i> in two conditions. In the fast-mapping condition, 12 of the 24 unfamiliar referents were presented, one at a time alongside a familiar referent (e.g., a dog) and a question (e.g., <i>Is the tail of the torato up?</i>). In the explicit-encoding condition, the other 12 unfamiliar referents were presented alone, one at a time, with a label (e.g., <i>This is a spimer</i>). Immediately after exposure (T1) and again after a 1-day interval (T2), memory for the word-to-exemplar link was measured with a three-alternative forced-choice test, requiring the participant to match a spoken word to one of three pictured referents from the training set. At T2, memory for semantic category information was measured with a four-alternative forced-choice test, requiring the participant to match a spoken word to one of four prototypical silhouettes representing each of the semantic categories.Results: Performance on word-to-exemplar link recognition was stronger for words learned in the explicit-encoding than the fast-mapping condition and stronger for the TD group than the DLD group. Time was not a significant factor as both groups maintained posttraining levels of performance after a 1-day retention interval. Performance on semantic category recognition was stronger for words learned in the explicit-encoding than the fast-mapping condition and stronger for the TD group than the DLD group. The lower category recognition performance of the DLD group was related to their lower nonverbal IQ scores.<b>Conclusion: </b>Contexts that allow for explicit encoding yield better learning of word-to-referent links than contexts that allow for fast mapping in both stronger and weaker learners. Adults with DLD have difficulty learning the link between words and referents, whether trained via fast mapping or explicit encoding and whether tested with exemplar or category referents. Retention is a relative strength for adults with DLD.<br><b>Supplemental Material S1.</b> Stimuli grouped by set.<br><b>Supplemental Material S2. </b>Lexical integration.<b><br></b>McGregor, K. K., Eden, N., Arbisi-Kelm, T., &amp; Oleson, J. (2020). The fast-mapping abilities of adults with developmental language disorder. <i>Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research.</i> Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1044/2020_JSLHR-19-00418<br>

Developmental language disorder (DLD) is a prevalent neurodevelopmental condition that affects approximately 7% of children in the United States. One notable characteristic of DLD is difficulty in mastering nonadjacent dependencies, such as the third-person singular -s or passive construction be -ed. This study examines behavioral and electrophysiological measures of nonadjacent dependencies learning in children with DLD in the context of a visual grammar-like learning paradigm. Fifty-one children (22 DLD, 29 typical language development [TD]) aged 8;0-12;4 (years;months) completed an aXb/cXd grammar learning task, followed by an immediate and 1-week follow-up test. Neurophysiological responses to grammatical and nongrammatical stimuli were measured by recording electroencephalography during the immediate test. Children with and without DLD performed similarly and above chance level during the immediate test. Performance on the follow-up test indicated improved accuracy in children with TD. The DLD group, on the other hand, no longer exhibited above chance-level performance, pointing to limited consolidation. Event-related potentials extracted in relation to the grammaticality of the test items highlighted processing differences in responses to grammatical violations between the two groups (TD and DLD). While a P600 was found sensitive to grammatical violations in the TD group, a frontal N400-like activation was found sensitive to violations in the DLD group. These findings are interpreted to suggest familiarity-based associative learning rather than rule-based processing in children with DLD. Children with DLD achieved comparable scores on the immediate behavioral test as their TD peers but did not show evidence of rule abstraction and long-term retention.

Children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) often struggle learning to spell. However, it is still unclear where their spelling difficulties lie, and whether they reflect on-going difficulties with specific linguistic domains. It is also unclear whether the spelling profiles of these children vary in different orthographies. The present study compares the spelling profiles of monolingual children with DLD in France and England at the end of primary school. By contrasting these cohorts, we explored the linguistic constraints that affect spelling, beyond phono-graphemic transparency, in two opaque orthographies. Seventeen French and 17 English children with DLD were compared to typically developing children matched for age or spelling level. Participants wrote a 5 min sample of free writing and spelled 12 controlled dictated words. Spelling errors were analyzed to capture areas of difficulty in each language, in the phonological, morphological, orthographic and semantic domains. Overall, the nature of the errors produced by children with DLD is representative of their spelling level in both languages. However, areas of difficulty vary with the language and task, with more morphological errors in French than in English across both tasks and more orthographic errors in English than in French dictated words. The error types produced by children with DLD also differed in the two languages: segmentation and contraction errors were found in French, whilst morphological ending errors were found in English. It is hypothesized that these differences reflect the phonological salience of the units misspelled in both languages. The present study also provides a detailed breakdown of the spelling errors found in both languages for children with DLD and typical peers aged 5–11.

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The pathways to the documented increased social and emotional difficulties in individuals with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) are unclear. We explored whether differences in social evaluation could account for social and emotional difficulties in adolescents with DLD using a computerized social evaluation task. Twenty-four adolescents with DLD were matched with twenty-six adolescents with typical language development (TLD) (Mage = 13.5 years, SE = 2.38; n = 18 female). They completed the Social Evaluation Learning Task (SELT; Button et al., 2015) which measures how quickly people learn the computer likes or dislikes either them or someone else. Adolescents and parents reported social and emotional functioning. Adolescents with DLD had poorer social understanding, in that they took longer to learn that the computer disliked them. They learned similarly to their TLD when the computer liked them and someone else. Adolescents with DLD also had higher self-reported anxiety and more parent reported emotional and peer problems; however, there was no mediational effect of social evaluation on socioemotional difficulties. This study demonstrates that adolescent with DLD have specific difficulties in interpreting cues that they are disliked by others but are just as good at understanding when they are liked. The differences seen in their social evaluation skills did not account for their increased socioemotional difficulties. This social evaluation bias might explain previous findings of good self-rated social competence while other ratings indicate social difficulties. Future research is necessary to investigate the implications of this finding further.

The current study aimed to fill the gap in research on factors predictive of word reading in French-speaking children with developmental language disorder (DLD) by finding out whether the same predictors of written word recognition evidenced in typically developing children would be retrieved in children with DLD or if some predictors could be specific to children with DLD, especially in the phonological domain. In total, 38 children with DLD and 44 control children were followed from 6 to 8 years in a longitudinal design including two time points: (1) just before explicit reading instruction, where potential predictors of reading were assessed (oral language skills and reading-related skills), and (2) after 2 years of learning to read, where isolated word reading and text reading were assessed in addition to the assessment of oral language skills and reading-related skills. The study mainly showed that the predictors of reading identified in typically developing children are retrieved in children with DLD except for phonemic awareness; the latter result was probably explained by a floor effect. Among the predictors in the phonological domain, phonological instability appeared as a promising predictor of reading irregular words. These results are consistent with the findings of many previous studies and tend to confirm the idea of a strong link between oral phonological skills and written word recognition skills; they also call for attention to specific features in the phonological development of children with DLD when learning to read, particularly phonological instability as a direction for future exploration.

The longitudinal study sought to examine the dynamic development of cognitive skills for reading among elementary-level students in Mainland China. Two groups of students in first (n=164, mean age=6.65 years at first test) and second grade (n=202, mean age=7.73 years at first test) were followed on orthographic awareness, morphological awareness and rapid automatized naming (RAN) for two years. The children exhibited significant improvement in orthographic awareness, morphological awareness and RAN from grades 1 to 4. More importantly, to the orthographic and morphological awareness, while the children took a leap from grade 1 to 2 and grade 3 to 4, the progress developed at relatively slow rates from grade 2 to 3. In order to assure children's development of orthographic and morphological awareness, evidence-based orthographically and morphologically enhanced instruction is needed for Chinese children in the early elementary years, especially for those at the stage from grade 2 to 3.

Cognitive precursors of word reading versus arithmetic competencies in young Chinese children