A New Memory Perspective on the Sentence Comprehension Deficits of School-Age Children with Developmental Language Disorder: Implications for Theory, Assessment, and Intervention

Montgomery, J. W., Gillam, R. B., & Evans, J. L. (2021). A New Memory Perspective on the Sentence Comprehension Deficits of School-Age Children with Developmental Language Disorder: Implications for Theory, Assessment, and Intervention. Language Speech and Hearing Services in Schools, 52(2), 449–466. https://doi.org/10.1044/2021_lshss-20-00128 

Children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) often struggle with understanding complex sentences, but this difficulty is not due to language alone. In this article, Montgomery, Gillam, and Evans propose a new way of understanding sentence comprehension by examining how multiple cognitive factors work together. Children with DLD tend to have weaknesses in vocabulary, grammar, memory, and attention, all of which can impact their ability to interpret sentences, especially those with more complex structures. The authors introduce a model that highlights four key contributors: working memory, language knowledge stored in long-term memory, controlled attention, and fluid reasoning. Importantly, the results show that working memory plays a central “conduit” role, meaning it is the system through which the other factors influence sentence comprehension. For typically developing children, language knowledge and reasoning indirectly support comprehension through working memory, whereas children with DLD rely more heavily on controlled attention to support their understanding. This suggests that children with DLD may use different strategies to process language. Overall, the study emphasizes that sentence comprehension difficulties are best understood as the result of interacting cognitive processes, with working memory at the center, and highlights the importance of focusing on strengthening language—through both implicit and explicit approaches—when supporting sentence comprehension.

Blogger: Diya Nair is a second year PhD student under the supervision of Dr Lisa Archibald.

A randomized controlled trial of an oral inferential comprehension intervention for young children with developmental language disorder

Dawes, E., Leitão, S., Claessen, M., & Kane, R. (2019). A randomized controlled trial of an oral inferential comprehension intervention for young children with developmental language disorder. Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 35(1), 39–54. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265659018815736

Inferential comprehension involves making connections between what you already know and new information to you. These connections allow you to draw conclusions or deepen understanding beyond just what is stated. Although inferencing is a skill that develops throughout childhood, children with a persistent language learning difficulty known as Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) tend to have weaker inferencing skills as compared to their peers. One way to help improve inferencing skills could be to work with stories, which require lots of inferencing.

In this study, 5-6 year old children with DLD either participated in a small group intervention based on retelling stories and making inferences (inferencing group) or participated in an intervention targeting phonemic awareness or the awareness of speech sounds in words (control group). Inferencing scores for the inferencing group improved significantly as compared to the control group. The improvements made by the inferencing group remained higher even after the intervention was completed (i.e., during the maintenance phase). Both groups displayed an increase in literal comprehension across the intervention, which was still seen at follow-up. To measure if children could apply skills developed in the intervention sessions to stories not included in the study, an additional story retell task was measured  after the intervention. Results revealed significantly better understanding of inferences for the inferencing group as compared to the control. 

These findings demonstrate the effectiveness of intervention for inferencing skills in children with DLD. The differences in skill-building between the inferential and literal comprehension suggests that both of these skills need to be specifically targeted in intervention. Inferencing skills are important for many social and academic contexts and their development should encouraged during early school-aged years.

 
Blogger: Isabella Nucci is a combined MClSc/PhD student working under the supervision of Dr. Lisa Archibald.