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Some 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.

This study examined and compared the comprehension of Mandarin ditransitive constructions in children with developmental language disorder (DLD) and children with autism spectrum disorder plus language impairment (ALI). Eighteen children with DLD, 17 children with ALI, and 27 age-matched typically developing (TDA) children, participated in a sentence-picture matching task on four patterns of Mandarin ditransitive constructions. Both children with DLD and children with ALI received significantly lower accuracy than TDA children in general and their most common errors were thematic role reversals. However, while children with ALI evinced a generalized deficit in all four patterns, only the comprehension of S1 (Subj. + V gei  + IO + DO) and S3 (Subj. +  gei  + IO + V + DO) was affected in children with DLD, with that of S2 (Subj. + V + DO +  gei  + IO) and S4 (Subj. + V + IO + DO) preserved in this population. Additionally, thematic role reversal errors were more dominant in children with DLD than in children with ALI who also committed a relatively higher proportion of Wrong Theme and No Recipient errors. It is concluded that the primary deficit of children with DLD lies in representing dependent relationships between the arguments and the verb as involved in thematic role assignment, but this is less critical in children with ALI, with their performance on the comprehension task possibly also related to other factors associated with the condition. To enhance the development of ditransitive constructions, intervention efforts for children with DLD and children with ALI could focus on strengthening the connection between each argument and its thematic role.

Children and adolescents with developmental language disorder (DLD) are, overall, vulnerable to difficulties in emotional adjustment and in peer relations. However, previous research has shown that different subgroups follow different trajectories in respect to the quality of peer relations. Less is known about the trajectories of emotional development. We consider here the possibility that development in these two domains is interrelated: that is, the trajectories of emotional and peer problems will proceed in parallel. We conducted longitudinal joint trajectories analyses of emotional and peer relations in a sample of young people identified as having DLD at the age of 7 years and seen at intervals up to 16 years. Potential influences on joint trajectory group membership were examined. Findings revealed five distinct joint trajectories. Emotional and peer difficulties do occur together from childhood to adolescence for just over half of the sample, but not all. The variables most clearly associated with group membership were pragmatic language ability, prosociality and parental mental health. This is the first study to examine joint longitudinal trajectories of emotional and peer difficulties in individuals with DLD. We demonstrate that development in individuals with DLD is heterogeneous and identify three key variables associated with personal and social adjustment from childhood to adolescence. Theoretical and clinical implications of these findings are discussed.

Language and communication deficits characterize both autism spectrum disorder and developmental language disorder, and the possibility of there being a common profile of these is a matter of tireless debate in the research community. This experimental study addresses the relation of these two developmental conditions in the critical topic of language. A total of 103 children (79 males, 24 females) participated in the present study. Specifically, the study’s sample consisted of 40 children with autism, 28 children with developmental language disorder, and 35 typically developing children between 6 and 12 years old. All children completed language and cognitive measures. The results showed that there is a subgroup inside the autism group of children who demonstrate language difficulties similar to children with developmental language disorder. Specifically, two different subgroups were derived from the autism group; those with language impairment and those without. Both autism and language-impaired groups scored lower than typically developing children on all language measures indicating a common pathology in language ability. The results of this study shed light on the relation between the two disorders, supporting the assumption of a subgroup with language impairment inside the autism spectrum disorder population. The common picture presented by the two developmental conditions highlights the need for further research in the field.

•Children with and without DLD showed comparable visual SL performance.•In EN sequences, TD showed early striatal and DLD delayed striatal involvement.•For DN sequences, DLD showed greater parietal–precuneus engagement after training.•In EN sequences, DLD showed stronger frontal–temporal engagement after training. Symptoms of developmental language disorder (DLD) may in part result from an underlying deficit in statistical learning (SL). This learning deficit may be related to the ability to extract probabilistic properties of events in the environment, which is linked to the functions of cortical and subcortical brain regions underlying SL. Using a behavioral SL task and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we tested sequential SL ability in the visual domain and its neural correlates in children with DLD and their typically developing (TD) peers. During fMRI, children performed SL tasks involving sequences of two types of stimuli: difficult-to-name (DN) and easy-to-name (EN) objects. The children underwent a pre-training fMRI, one week of behavioral training and a post-training fMRI. Similar task performance was observed in both groups during the experimental sessions, with an improvement in performance following training in the SL tasks involving both DN and EN objects. FMRI results revealed that for DN objects, after training, the DLD group presented greater involvement of the parietal and precuneus regions in the SL task performance. In turn, for EN objects, after training, the DLD group presented greater involvement of the frontal cortex and temporal pole. Furthermore, in the TD group, the left putamen, globus pallidus and thalamus were involved in the early stages of sequential SL with EN stimuli, whereas in the DLD group, these areas were involved in SL after training. Our results suggest that children with DLD depending on stimulus characteristics may employ different cognitive processes in SL than TD children, possibly as a supportive effort or a compensatory mechanism.

One important aspect of human cognition involves the learning of structured information encountered in our environment, a phenomenon known as statistical learning. A growing body of research suggests that learning to read print is partially guided by learning the statistical contingencies existing between the letters within a word, and also between the letters and sounds to which the letters refer. Research also suggests that impairments to statistical learning ability may at least partially explain the difficulties experienced by individuals diagnosed with dyslexia. However, the findings regarding impaired learning are not consistent, perhaps partly due to the varied use of methodologies across studies – such as differences in the learning paradigms, stimuli used, and the way that learning is assessed – as well as differences in participant samples such as age and extent of the learning disorder. In this review, we attempt to examine the purported link between statistical learning and dyslexia by assessing a set of the most recent and relevant studies in both adults and children. Based on this review, we conclude that although there is some evidence for a statistical learning impairment in adults with dyslexia, the evidence for an impairment in children is much weaker. We discuss several suggestive trends that emerge from our examination of the research, such as issues related to task heterogeneity, possible age effects, the role of publication bias, and other suggestions for future research such as the use of neural measures and a need to better understand how statistical learning changes across typical development. We conclude that no current theoretical framework of dyslexia fully captures the extant research findings on statistical learning.

Diglossia in the Arabic language refers to the existence of two varieties of the same language: the Spoken Arabic (SA) and the Literary Arabic (LA). This study examined the development of listening comprehension (LC) among diglossic Arabic K1–K3. For this purpose, a large sample of typically developing (TD; N = 210) and developmental language disorder children (DLD; N = 118) were examined using SA and LA texts. The analysis of variance conducted on their performance in LC revealed significant effects of K-level, group (TD vs. DLD) and text affiliation (SA vs. LA): higher scores in TD and in SA. A significant interaction between text affiliation and K-level was observed among the TD but not the DLD group. This interaction indicated that the gap in LC between the SA and LA varieties decreased with age only among TD children. The theoretical and pedagogical implications of these results are discussed.

Research indicates children and young people in care have a high prevalence of Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) as part of a complex set of vulnerabilities. This study describes the profile of language, literacy and communication abilities of a cohort of care leavers. The language, literacy and communication abilities of 44 young people leaving care between the ages of 16 and 26 years were assessed using standardized measures. Demographic data about the young people was collected along with a survey to key staff to capture their perceptions and experiences of the language and communication abilities of these young people. Ninety percent of the care leavers’ language abilities were below average and over 60% met criteria for DLD in combination with literacy difficulties, developmental disorders and social, emotional and mental health difficulties (SEMH). The implications of unidentified DLD on the lives of young people leaving care is discussed. Earlier identification of DLD is advocated to enable services to intervene to facilitate more positive outcomes and life chances for this very vulnerable population.

This study presents a newly developed Sentence Repetition Task/SRT as a tool designed to investigate the acquisition of different syntactic structures in children with typical development (TD) and Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). The tool is grounded in the Growing Trees (GT, henceforth) approach, which assumes that developmental progression reflects the hierarchical growth of the syntactic tree, as described in cartographic analyses of clause structure. The SRT Protocol was constructed following the three developmental stages identified by GT: VP/TP, lower zone of the Left Periphery (LP henceforth), and higher LP zone. A preliminary pilot version was administered to 27 TD and 28 DLD children, followed by a revised second version with improved item design and broader syntactic coverage, administered to 28 TD and 21 DLD children. Descriptive and inferential analyses demonstrate a clear hierarchy in the acquisition of Italian morphosyntax, fully consistent with the three-stage developmental progression predicted by the model. Children with DLD follow the same path but with delayed acquisition and slower consolidation of certain structures. These findings provide developmentally grounded benchmarks for identifying morphosyntactic delays and show that the SRT Protocol is a reliable tool for profiling early syntactic development. Crucially, the protocol supports diagnosis and clinical practice by helping clinicians ensuring interventions that are both theoretically informed and aligned with syntactic growth.

The aim of this study was to assess the criterion validity of a new screening instrument, the Early Language Scale (ELS), for the identification of young children at risk for developmental language disorder (DLD), and to determine optimal age-adjusted cut-off scores. We recruited a community-based sample of 265 children aged 1 to 6 years of age. Parents of these children responded on the ELS, a 26-item “yes-no” questionnaire. The children were assessed with extended language tests (language comprehension, word production, sentence production, communication). A composite score out of these tests (two tests below – 1 SD or one below − 1.5 SD) was used as reference standard. We assessed the validity of the ELS, measured by sensitivity, specificity, predictive values, and AUC. The optimal sensitivity/specificity age-dependent cut-off ELS score was at 15th percentile. Sensitivity and specificity were 0.62 and 0.93, respectively. Positive predictive value was moderate (0.53), negative predictive value was high (0.95), the positive likelihood ratio was 9.16, and negative likelihood ratio was 0.41. The area under the ROC curve was 0.88. The items covered the increasing language development for the ages from 1 to 6.Conclusion: The ELS is a valid instrument to identify children with DLD covering an age range of 1 to 6 years in community-based settings.What is Known:• Early identification and treatment of developmental language disorders can reduce negative effects on children’s emotional functioning, academic success, and social relationships.• Short, validated language screening instruments that cover the full age range of early childhood language development lack.What is New:• The 26-item Early Language Scale (ELS) is a valid instrument to identify children at risk for developmental language disorder in well-child care and early educational settings among Dutch children aged 1–6 years.