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Finding the Mole and Choosing the Apple: Executive Function Challenges in Children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD)

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Submitted:

14 November 2024

Posted:

15 November 2024

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Abstract
Background: Children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) frequently experience deficits in cognitive skills such as working memory (WM) and sustained attention (SA), which are closely related to language development. Yet, these cognitive deficits remain underexplored in early childhood, particularly during the preschool years. Objective: This study explores WM and SA in Chilean preschoolers with DLD compared to their typically developing (TD) peers, using the non-verbal tasks "Torpo the Clumsy Mole" for WM and the Continuous Performance Task (CPT) "Duno and the Worms" for SA, both from the Child Neuropsychological Evaluation Test (TENI in Spanish). Method: Thirty DLD and 30 TLD peers (aged 4 to 4 years 11 months) participated. Accuracy and reaction times in both tasks were assessed. Results: DLD children demonstrated significant deficits in working memory accuracy and poorer sustained attention accuracy despite exhibiting shorter reaction times in the sustained attention task compared to TLD children. Conclusion: The findings highlight the multifaceted nature of DLD, particularly in relation to cognitive dimensions beyond language, such as working memory and sustained attention. Early identification of these differences emphasizes the important role of executive functions in DLD.
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Subject: Social Sciences  -   Education
Copyright: This open access article is published under a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license, which permit the free download, distribution, and reuse, provided that the author and preprint are cited in any reuse.
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