The Short-term Verbal Memory Endophenotype for Developmental Language Disorder
Father Flanagan's Boys' Home
Summary
The goal of this clinical trial is to determine how memory and attention affect the ability of children with developmental language disorder (DLD) to learn and use new vocabulary.
Description
The goal of this clinical trial is to determine how memory and attention affect the ability of children with developmental language disorder (DLD) to learn and use new vocabulary. Aims 1-3 include children with DLD and healthy children with typical language development. The general hypothesis is that the memory and attention challenges that characterize DLD, but not healthy development, affect the robustness of word learning. Aim 4 includes healthy children only to simulate the cascading effects of weak word learning on the broader linguistic system. The main questions this clinical trial aim…
Eligibility
- Age range
- 5–10 years
- Sex
- All
- Healthy volunteers
- Yes
Inclusion Criteria: * Has DLD or typical language development Exclusion Criteria * Has not been exposed to English since birth * Has other neurodevelopmental or sensory condition that could explain the language problem (e.g., intellectual disability, autism, hearing loss).
Interventions
- BehavioralSupportive learning
All interventions are manipulations to the stimuli that the child hears with the goal of discovering which manipulations support verbal learning.
- BehavioralCascades
The intervention is a manipulation of word instruction with the goal of discovering whether weaker word learning results in cascading effects on semantic category memory and sentence comprehension.
Location
- Boys Town National Research HospitalOmaha, Nebraska