Reduced deficits observed in children and adolescents with developmental language disorder using proper nonverbalizable span tasks.

BACKGROUND

Children with developmental language disorder (DLD)-previously called Specific Language Impairment (SLI)-often perform poorly in verbal working memory (WM) tasks, but the picture is less clear regarding their visuospatial WM capacity. Recent research has been inconclusive regarding whether visuospatial working memory is impaired in DLD. Additionally, it is still unclear whether the putative disparity of WM performance persists in adolescence.

AIMS: The aim of the current study was to unveil potential impairments in verbal and visuospatial working memory in DLD by exploring two developmental age groups of French-speaking children and adolescents.

METHODS

This study examined verbal and nonverbal short-term and working memory capacity using digit span and Corsi block tasks in twelve children (7-11-year-olds) and twelve adolescents (12-18-year-olds) with developmental language disorder (DLD) in comparison to that in their typically developing peers.

RESULTS

Our findings showed that both children and adolescents with DLD have deficits in storage and processing ability for the verbal domain. However, both the short-term and working memory estimates of immediate capacity for visuospatial information in adolescents with DLD were virtually intact.

CONCLUSIONS

These results indicate that both verbal and nonverbal storage and processing capacity are largely modulated by age, suggesting that the children with DLD show virtually intact nonverbal working memory capacity as they reach adolescence.