Department of Languages, Literatures, Communication, Education and Society, University of Udine, Udine 33100, Italy.
Scientific Institute IRCCS "Eugenio Medea", San Vito al Tagliamento, Pordenone 33078, Italy.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020 Mar 9;17(5):1772. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17051772.
: 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. : 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. : 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. : 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.
儿童发展性语言障碍（DLD）患者的语言困难与认知障碍之间的关系是国际研究的热点。这些儿童的执行功能（EF）似乎较弱。目前的研究旨在探索 EF 的两个成分（即更新和抑制）的困难与 16 名 DLD 学龄前儿童和 24 名典型发展同伴的语言和叙事技能之间的关系。更新技能通过韦氏量表的前向和后向数字回忆子测验进行测试，而儿童的抑制能力通过完成发展神经心理学评估（NEPSY-II）抑制任务进行评估。参与者的语言技能信息通过一系列子测验收集，这些子测验包括 Batteria per la Valutazione del Linguaggio in bambini dai 4 ai 12 anni（Batteria per la Valutazione del Linguaggio；BVL_4-12），评估发音和语音辨别技能、词汇产生/理解、语法产生/理解和叙事产生技能。研究结果表明，DLD 儿童在更新和抑制任务上的表现明显低于同龄人。DLD 组在发音/语音技能、语法产生/理解和叙事产生中的词汇信息量方面存在语言困难。EF 的测量与语言和叙事测量相关。目前的研究证实了 DLD 在 EF 上的表现与表现出的语言技能之间存在显著关联，这表明需要将执行功能的评估纳入 DLD 儿童的早期干预康复计划中。
