Do You Like Me? Differences in Learning Social Cues in Adolescents with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD).

Area of Science:

• Developmental Psychology
• Clinical Linguistics
• Neurodevelopmental Disorders

Background:

• Individuals with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) often exhibit social and emotional difficulties.
• The underlying reasons for these socioemotional challenges in DLD remain unclear.
• Social evaluation processing may play a role in social difficulties.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if differences in social evaluation processing contribute to social and emotional difficulties in adolescents with DLD.
• To examine how adolescents with DLD learn social cues related to like and dislike from a computer.

Main Methods:

• A computerized social evaluation task (Social Evaluation Learning Task - SELT) was administered to adolescents with DLD and typically language developing (TLD) peers.
• Participants' social and emotional functioning was assessed through self-report and parent reports.
• Mediational analysis was used to explore the role of social evaluation in socioemotional outcomes.

Main Results:

• Adolescents with DLD showed impaired learning of negative social cues (computer dislike) compared to TLD peers.
• No significant differences were found in learning positive social cues (computer like).
• Adolescents with DLD reported higher anxiety and parents reported more emotional and peer problems, but social evaluation did not mediate these difficulties.

Conclusions:

• Adolescents with DLD possess specific deficits in interpreting cues of social rejection.
• These social evaluation biases do not fully account for the observed socioemotional difficulties in this population.
• Findings suggest a potential explanation for discrepancies between self-perceived and externally rated social competence in DLD.