Including Nonlinguistic Processing Tasks in the Identification of Developmental Language Disorder

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Developmental Psychology
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• Accurate identification of developmental language disorder (DLD) is difficult, especially in multilingual children.
• Children with DLD often exhibit subtle deficits in nonlinguistic cognitive processing.
• Language experience may minimally affect performance on these cognitive tasks.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if nonlinguistic cognitive processing tasks can aid in identifying DLD in children from varied linguistic backgrounds.
• To assess the diagnostic accuracy of these tasks in diverse populations.

Main Methods:

• Combined data from 4 U.S. studies (395 children, ages 6-10, English/Spanish bilinguals) and 1 Vietnamese study (55 children).
• Administered nonlinguistic cognitive tasks measuring processing speed, auditory working memory, and attentional control.
• Analyzed data comparing DLD and typically developing groups, deriving diagnostic accuracy metrics.

Main Results:

• Tasks demonstrated adequate sensitivity or specificity for identifying DLD across most age groups.
• Likelihood ratios indicated moderately to very informative diagnostic potential.
• Findings remained consistent when combining monolingual and bilingual participants.

Conclusions:

• Nonlinguistic cognitive tasks may support DLD identification as part of a comprehensive assessment strategy.
• Further research is necessary to refine tasks, validate diagnostic cut-points, and expand to more language groups.