Finding the Mole and Choosing the Apple: Executive Function Challenges in Children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD).

BACKGROUND

Children with a developmental language disorder (DLD) frequently experience deficits in cognitive skills such as working memory (WM) and sustained attention (SA), which are closely related to language development. Yet, these cognitive deficits remain underexplored in early childhood, particularly during the preschool years.

OBJECTIVE

This study explores WM and SA in Chilean preschoolers with a DLD compared to their typically developing (TD) peers, using the nonverbal tasks "Torpo the Clumsy Mole" for WM and the Continuous Performance Task (CPT) "Duno and the Worms" for SA, both from the Child Neuropsychological Evaluation Test (TENI in Spanish).

METHOD

Thirty DLD and 30 TLD peers (aged 4 to 4 years 11 months) participated. Accuracy and reaction times in both tasks were assessed.

RESULTS

The children with a DLD demonstrated significant deficits in working memory accuracy and poorer sustained attention accuracy despite exhibiting shorter reaction times in the sustained attention task compared to TLD children.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings highlight the multifaceted nature of a DLD, particularly in relation to cognitive dimensions beyond language, such as working memory and sustained attention. Early identification of these differences emphasizes the important role of executive functions in DLDs.