Purpose: The goal of this study was to examine potential mediators of the relationship between developmental language disorder (DLD) status and executive function performance. Method: Participants included preschoolers, of whom 80 met the diagnostic criteria for DLD and 103 were categorized as having typical language abilities. Participants'…

Purpose: Prior work has found that "late talkers" (LTs) as a group continue to demonstrate lower language and reading outcomes compared to their typically developing (TD) peers even into young adulthood. Others identified that children diagnosed with developmental language disorder (DLD) show difficulties later with theory of mind (ToM)…

The ability to distinguish lies from sincere false statements requires understanding a speaker's communicative intentions and is argued to develop through linguistic interaction. We tested whether this ability was delayed in 26 children with severe-to-profound hearing loss who, based on vocabulary size, were thought to have relatively limited…

Word retrieval and lexical organization were explored in 16 Danish children with slight to severe hearing loss (HL), 11 children with developmental language disorder (DLD), and 25 typically developing (TD) children in the age range of 7 to 12 years. There is a special focus on children with HL with and without language difficulties compared with…

Background: Early detection and remediation of language disorders are important in helping children to establish appropriate communicative and social behaviour and acquire additional information about the world through the use of language. In the Netherlands, children with (a suspicion of) language disorders are referred to speech and hearing…

Purpose: Phonological complexity is known to be a good index of developmental language disorder (DLD) in normal-hearing children, who have major difficulties on some complex structures. Some deaf children with cochlear implants (CIs) present a profile that evokes DLD, with persistent linguistic difficulties despite good audiological and…

Typically developing (TD) children, as young as four years of age, have demonstrated enhanced noun learning when orthographic representations are presented during learning tasks. This dissertation investigated the impact of orthographic support on word learning in diverse populations, focusing on children from a variety of clinical categories…

The present study examined the reading comprehension and receptive vocabulary skills of children with poor reading comprehension despite adequate decoding using a regression-based matching technique. Participants included five cohorts of children who were identified as typical readers (N = 70,493 - 75,553) or as children with specific reading…

This longitudinal study examined pragmatic language in boys and girls with Down syndrome (DS) at up to three time points, using parent report, standardized and direct assessments. We also explored relationships among theory of mind, executive function, nonverbal mental age, receptive and expressive vocabulary, grammatical complexity, and pragmatic…

Background: Children and young people with Down's syndrome present with deficits in expressive speech and language, accompanied by strengths in vocabulary comprehension compared with non-verbal mental age. Intelligibility is particularly low, but whether speech is delayed or disordered is a controversial topic. Most studies suggest a delay, but no…

Background: The increasing prevalence of specific language impairment (SLI) is a matter of current debate. Aims: Speech and language therapists and other authorities in Finland have discussed the prevalence of SLI since the 1990s. This discussion has been based on international studies because of the lack of national studies. This paper presents…

The goal of this study was to develop an empirically derived classification system for selective mutism (SM) using parent-report measures of social anxiety, behavior problems, and communication delays. The sample consisted of parents of 130 children (ages 5-12) with SM. Results from latent profile analysis supported a 3-class solution made up of…

Characterizing early communicative development in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) is valuable for understanding profiles of ability in this population. The current investigation was modeled on Charman, Drew, Baird & Baird (2003b). Analyses explored parent report of early vocabulary, non-verbal communication, functional object use and…