Consistency of a Nonword Repetition Task to Discriminate Children with and without Developmental Language Disorder in Catalan-Spanish and European Portuguese Speaking Children

Grammatical correction and morphological productivity tasks as potential identifiers of developmental language disorder in Spanish-Catalan bilingual children: a pilot study

A critical problem for Catalan-Spanish bilinguals is the lack of assessment tools to conduct valid and accurate oral language evaluations. The purpose of this preliminary study was to provide pilot data for a new potential assessment tool in Catalan. We examined the possibility that two novel tasks, a grammatical correction (GramCorr) and morphological productivity (MP; nonword and word subtasks), could differentiate between Catalan-speaking children with and without developmental language disorder (DLD) with good diagnostic accuracy. Twenty-seven school-aged children with DLD (Mage = 9;1 years) and twenty-seven age/sex-matched typically developing (TD) children (Mage = 9;0 years) participated in the study. Group differences and diagnostic accuracy analyses (sensitivity and specificity and likelihood ratios) were conducted. Results showed that the overall accuracy of children with DLD was significantly poorer than that of the TD controls in the two tasks. The preliminary diagnostic accuracy results suggested that the overall test (GramCorr+MP) could be useful in identifying children with DLD (cut-off point 62.1%; sensitivity (.929)/specificity (.893); +LH (8.67)/-LH (0.80). Moreover, the overall MP task (nonword + word subtasks; cut-off point 60%; sensitivity (.897)/specificity (.931), +LH (13.00)/-LH (0.111)) appears to provide adequate information to help in detecting DLD. The nature of both tasks, their usefulness for practitioners and future steps in the design of valid tools for the identification of Catalan speaking children with DLD are discussed.

Evaluating the role of word-related parameters in the discriminative power of a novel nonword repetition task for bilingual children

In bi- and monolingual children, nonword repetition tasks (NWRTs) differentiate typically developing (TD) children from children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) or children with a risk of DLD. Previous research has highlighted the importance of considering language specificity in nonword (NW) construction especially for bilingual children. A novel NWRT has been designed for the screening of DLD risk in the bilingual Italian-German preschool population, creating lists of language-specific (for the two target languages) and language-non-specific NWs. This study aimed to test the discriminative validity of this NWRT and to identify the characteristics of the NWs that maximise discriminative validity within language-specific and language-non-specific subsets. The findings confirm the role of language specificity (in terms of target language alikeness) but also of other characteristics related to word structure complexity.

Exploring Spanish writing abilities of children with developmental language disorder in expository texts

Introduction

Numerous studies have shown that children with developmental language disorder (DLD), in addition to oral language difficulties, exhibit impaired writing abilities. Their texts contain problems in grammar, organization, cohesion, and length of written output. However, most of these studies have been conducted with English speakers. English is characterized by complex phonological structure, opaque orthography, poor morphology and strict word order. The aim of this research is to observe the writing abilities of children with DLD in a language with simple phonological structure, transparent orthography, rich morphology and flexible word order like Spanish in the production of expository texts.

Methods

Twenty-six children with DLD (mean age in months = 128.85) and 26 age-and sex-matched typically developing (TD) children (mean age in months = 124.61) wrote an expository text about their favorite animal.

Results

In order to analyze how the two groups plan and encode written texts, we looked at word frequency and sentence structure, grammatical complexity and lexical density, and omissions and errors. Compared to the TD group, the children with DLD omitted more content words; made more errors with functional words, verb conjugation and inflectional morphemes, and made a large number of spelling errors. Moreover, they wrote fewer words, fewer sentences, and less structurally and lexically complex texts.

Discussion

These results show that children with DLD who speak a transparent orthography language such as Spanish also have difficulties in most language areas when producing written texts. Our findings should be considered when planning and designing interventions.

Modulating Phonological Working Memory With Anodal High-Definition Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation to the Anterior Portion of the Supplementary Motor Area

BACKGROUND

Phonological working memory is key to vocabulary acquisition, spoken word recognition, real-time language processing, and reading. Transcranial direct current stimulation, when coupled with behavioral training, has been shown to facilitate speech motor output processes, a key component of nonword repetition, the primary task used to assess phonological working memory. In this study, we examined the efficacy of combining overt nonword repetition training with anodal high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation (HD tDCS) to the presupplementary motor area (preSMA) to enhance nonword repetition.

OBJECTIVE

This study investigated whether 20 min of active or sham anodal HD tDCS targeting preSMA concurrently with a nonword repetition task differentially impacted nonword repetition ability.

METHOD

Twenty-eight neurotypical college-age adults (18-25 years; 19 females, eight males, one nonbinary) completed a 20-min nonword repetition training task where they received either active or sham 1-mA anodal HD tDCS to the preSMA while overtly repeating a list of four-, five-, six-, and seven-syllable English-like nonwords presented in a random order. Whole nonword accuracy and error patterns (phoneme and syllable) were measured prior to and following training.

RESULTS

Following training, both groups showed a decrease in nonword repetition accuracy. The drop in performance was significantly greater for the active stimulation group compared to the sham stimulation group at the four-syllable nonword length.

DISCUSSION

The findings suggest that targeting the speech motor component of nonword repetition through overt training and HD tDCS to the preSMA does not enhance phonological working memory ability.

Assessing phonological short-term memory in Greek: Reliability and validity of a non-word repetition test

This study explores the reliability and validity of a NWR task in a large cohort of 387 TD Greek-speaking children aged 7-13 years attending elementary (Grades 2-6) and secondary school (Grade 1), divided into six age groups. Further, the relationship between NWR and reading fluency skills as well as the predictive value of the NWR on reading fluency skills in TD children are examined. To investigate the external reliability of the NWR task, test-retest reliability was performed, and excellent test-retest reliability was found. Internal reliability was explored with Cronbach's alpha coefficient and good reliability was found. To explore convergent validity, correlation analysis between NWR and reading fluency was conducted and significant and strong correlations were found for all age groups excepted 2 (ages 9-10 and 12-13). To examine predictive validity, regression analysis was conducted between these two variables and showed that performance on NWR contributed significantly to reading fluency skills, suggesting that NWR skills are a good predictor of reading skills. Finally, it was explored whether the relevant scores increase as a function of age and found significant differences between groups that differed in 2 years or more, while this difference was no longer significant after 10 years. This finding suggests that phonological STM increases in capacity along with age, but only until the age of 10, where it seems to reach a ceiling. In addition, linear regression analysis showed that age contributed significantly to performance on NWR test. To sum up, the present study provides normative data of a NWR test for a wide age range, which does not exist in the Greek language (particularly for ages over 9 years) and it can be concluded that the present NWR test can be successfully used as a reliable and valid measure of phonological STM in the age range that was examined in this study.

A Nonword Repetition Task Discriminates Typically Developing Italian-German Bilingual Children From Bilingual Children With Developmental Language Disorder: The Role of Language-Specific and Language-Non-specific Nonwords

In bi- and monolingual children, nonword repetition tasks (NWRTs) differentiate between typically developing (TD) and children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). Language specificity is a crucial factor in nonword construction especially for multilingual children. While language-specific nonwords seem less artificial than non-specific nonwords, the application of language-specific phonemes may be less suitable for bilingual children who are exposed to the target language less than monolingual peers. This study evaluates the concurrent and predictive value of a novel, computerized NWRT implemented in the MuLiMi web-platform and its potential in the discrimination of bilingual children with and without DLD, investigating the role of nonwords' language specificity. Thirty-seven children (of whom 17 had an objective risk of phonological disorders) with at least one Italian-speaking parent, living and attending kindergartens in Germany were tested with the MuLiMi NWRT and German standardized language tests. Caregivers and kindergarten teachers filled in questionnaires. Fourteen of the children were re-tested after 8-12 months. The results suggest that the new test's concurrent and discriminative validity are good. Analysis of variance revealed highly significant differences between children with and without (an objective risk of) phonological disorders and a significant interaction between nonword specificity and risk group. Significant correlations of initial scores with follow-up scores collected after 8-12 months were also found, as well as correlations with improvements in language abilities. In conclusion, although both language-specific and language-non-specific nonword repetition can support DLD risk identification in bilingual children, language-specific stimuli appear to be particularly sensitive indicators. This is interpreted as confirming DLD children's reduced sensitivity to frequent, familiar characteristics of the linguistic stimuli. The test's discriminative and concurrent validity showed to be robust to various potentially influencing factors like patterns of language exposure.

Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Screening Tools for Language Disorder

Language disorder is one of the most prevalent developmental disorders and is associated with long-term sequelae. However, routine screening is still controversial and is not universally part of early childhood health surveillance. Evidence concerning the detection accuracy, benefits, and harms of screening for language disorders remains inadequate, as shown in a previous review. In October 2020, a systematic review was conducted to investigate the accuracy of available screening tools and the potential sources of variability. A literature search was conducted using CINAHL Plus, ComDisCome, PsycInfo, PsycArticles, ERIC, PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus. Studies describing, developing, or validating screening tools for language disorder under the age of 6 were included. QUADAS-2 was used to evaluate risk of bias in individual studies. Meta-analyses were performed on the reported accuracy of the screening tools examined. The performance of the screening tools was explored by plotting hierarchical summary receiver operating characteristic (HSROC) curves. The effects of the proxy used in defining language disorders, the test administrators, the screening-diagnosis interval and age of screening on screening accuracy were investigated by meta-regression. Of the 2,366 articles located, 47 studies involving 67 screening tools were included. About one-third of the tests (35.4%) achieved at least fair accuracy, while only a small proportion (13.8%) achieved good accuracy. HSROC curves revealed a remarkable variation in sensitivity and specificity for the three major types of screening, which used the child's actual language ability, clinical markers, and both as the proxy, respectively. None of these three types of screening tools achieved good accuracy. Meta-regression showed that tools using the child's actual language as the proxy demonstrated better sensitivity than that of clinical markers. Tools using long screening-diagnosis intervals had a lower sensitivity than those using short screening-diagnosis intervals. Parent report showed a level of accuracy comparable to that of those administered by trained examiners. Screening tools used under and above 4yo appeared to have similar sensitivity and specificity. In conclusion, there are still gaps between the available screening tools for language disorders and the adoption of these tools in population screening. Future tool development can focus on maximizing accuracy and identifying metrics that are sensitive to the dynamic nature of language development.

Systematic Review Registration

https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?RecordID=210505, PROSPERO: CRD42020210505.

Nonword Repetition Performance of Arabic-Speaking Children With and Without Developmental Language Disorder: A Study on Diagnostic Accuracy

Purpose This study evaluates the effectiveness of a nonword repetition (NWR) task in discriminating between Palestinian Arabic-speaking children with developmental language disorder (DLD) and age-matched typically developing (TD) children. Method Participants were 30 children with DLD aged between 4;0 and 6;10 (years;months) and 60 TD children aged between 4;0 and 6;8 matched on chronological age. The Arabic version of a Quasi-Universal NWR task was administered. The task comprises 30 nonwords that vary in length, presence of consonant clusters (CCs) and wordlikeness ratings. Responses were scored using an item-level scoring method to assess the diagnostic accuracy of the task. Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis was conducted to determine the best cutoff point with the highest sensitivity and specificity values, and likelihood ratios were calculated. Results Children with DLD scored significantly lower on the NWR task than their age-matched TD peers. Only the DLD group was influenced by the phonological complexity of the nonwords, with nonwords with two CC being more difficult than nonwords with no or only one CC. For both groups, three-syllable nonwords were repeated less accurately than two- and one-syllable nonwords. Also, high word-like nonwords were repeated more accurately than nonwords with low wordlikeness ratings. The best cutoff score had sensitivity and specificity of 93% and highly informative likelihood ratios. Conclusions NWR was an area of difficulty for Palestinian Arabic-speaking children with DLD. NWR showed excellent discriminatory power in differentiating Arabic-speaking children diagnosed with DLD from their age-matched TD peers. NWR appears to hold promise for clinical use as it is a useful indicator of DLD in Arabic. These results need to be further validated using population-based studies. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.14880360.