Abilities and Disabilities Among Children With Developmental Language Disorder.

Purpose: The aim of this study was to situate developmental language disorder (DLD) within the impairment and disability framework of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF); describe the functional strengths and weaknesses of a cohort of first-grade children with DLD and their peers; and explore the ways that language-related disabilities relate to language impairment, developmental risk, and receipt of language services.

Method: We queried the caregivers of 35 children with DLD and 44 peers with typical language development about their children's language-related functions, developmental risks, and language services using mixed quantitative and qualitative methods.

Results: The children with DLD presented with weaknesses in domains that are highly dependent upon language skill, including communication, community function, interpersonal relationships, and academics.

Direct Instruction Improves Word Learning for Children With Developmental Language Disorder.

Purpose: The current study compared the effects of direct instruction versus indirect exposure on multiple aspects of novel word learning for children with developmental language disorder (DLD) and children with typical language development (TLD).

Method: Participants included 36 children with DLD and 45 children with TLD. All children were in the first grade and 6-8 years of age ( = 7 years; 2 months).

Word Learning by Preschool-Age Children: Differences in Encoding, Re-Encoding, and Consolidation Across Learners During Slow Mapping.

Purpose: Children with typical development vary in how much experience they need to learn words. This could be due to differences in the amount of information encoded during periods of input, consolidated between periods of input, or both. Our primary purpose is to identify whether encoding, consolidation, or both, drive individual differences in the slow-mapping process.

Word Learning by Preschool-Age Children With Developmental Language Disorder: Impaired Encoding and Robust Consolidation During Slow Mapping.

Purpose Learning novel words, including the specific phonemes that make up word forms, is a struggle for many individuals with developmental language disorder (DLD). Building robust representations of words includes encoding during periods of input and consolidation between periods of input. The primary purpose of the current study is to determine differences between children with DLD and with typical development (TD) in the encoding and consolidation of word forms during the slow mapping process.

Children's language abilities predict success in remote communication contexts.

Remote communicative contexts are part of everyday social, familial, and academic interactions for the modern child. We investigated the ability of second-graders to engage in remote discourse, and we determined whether language ability, theory of mind, and shy temperament predicted their success. Fifty 7-to-9-year-old monolingual English speakers with a wide range of language abilities participated in standardized testing and an expository discourse task in which they taught two adults to solve the Tower of London, one in an audiovisual condition to simulate video chat and a second in an audio-only condition to simulate phone communication.