Nonlinguistic cognitive processing commonalities among linguistically diverse learners with developmental language disorder

Project Summary/Abstract Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) demonstrate language deficits in comparison to unaffected peers from similar language-learning environments. Because of the diversity in children’s language-learning environments, the linguistic characteristics of DLD differ across children. However, affected children may share common underlying deficits in cognitive processing skills such as processing speed, working memory, and sustained selective attention. This project systematically examines the cognitive processing profiles of individual children with DLD from different language-learning environments to identify common patterns of deficit and utilize them to identify DLD. We include children aged 5- to 7-years from three different language groups (English only, Spanish-English, and Vietnamese-English); within each of these three groups, both children with typical development (n = 60 per group; n = 180 total) and children with DLD (n = 20 per group; n = 60 total) are represented. Participants will complete assessments of processing speed, working memory, and sustained selective attention in the visual and auditory modalities using nonlinguistic stimuli to avoid bias based on linguistic experience (for bilingual children) or linguistic deficits (for children with DLD). The project will establish the reliability and validity of each assessment task to ensure suitability for clinical use (Aim 1). Cluster analyses will determine common profiles of cognitive processing skill and whether these profiles differ for children with and without DLD (Aim 2). Diagnostic accuracy analyses will be conducted to determine whether nonlinguistic cognitive processing tasks can identify children with DLD within a diverse group of language learners (Aim 3). This project will advance understanding of the underlying cognitive mechanisms that contribute to DLD by examining commonalities across children learning language in diverse circumstances. It will also establish a novel and universal approach to DLD identification that will reduce disparities across children.