Understanding developmental language disorder - the Helsinki longitudinal SLI study (HelSLI): a study protocol

Abstract

BackgroundDevelopmental language disorder (DLD, also called specific language impairment, SLI) is a common developmental disorder comprising the largest disability group in pre-school-aged children. Approximately 7% of the population is expected to have developmental language difficulties. However, the specific etiological factors leading to DLD are not yet known and even the typical linguistic features appear to vary by language. We present here a project that investigates DLD at multiple levels of analysis and aims to make the reliable prediction and early identification of the difficulties possible. Following the multiple deficit model of developmental disorders, we investigate the DLD phenomenon at the etiological, neural, cognitive, behavioral, and psychosocial levels, in a longitudinal study of preschool children.MethodsIn January 2013, we launched the Helsinki Longitudinal SLI study (HelSLI) at the Helsinki University Hospital (http://tiny.cc/HelSLI). We will study 227 children aged 3–6 years with suspected DLD and their 160 typically developing peers. Five subprojects will determine how the child’s psychological characteristics and environment correlate with DLD and how the child’s well-being relates to DLD, the characteristics of DLD in monolingual versus bilingual children, nonlinguistic cognitive correlates of DLD, electrophysiological underpinnings of DLD, and the role of genetic risk factors. Methods include saliva samples, EEG, computerized cognitive tasks, neuropsychological and speech and language assessments, video-observations, and questionnaires.DiscussionThe project aims to increase our understanding of the multiple interactive risk and protective factors that affect the developing heterogeneous cognitive and behavioral profile of DLD, including factors affecting literacy development. This accumulated knowledge will form a heuristic basis for the development of new interventions targeting linguistic and non-linguistic aspects of DLD.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s40359-018-0222-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Cognitive dimensions of learning in children with problems in attention, learning and memory

“…The prevalence of reading difficulties is estimated at 16% (Catts, Compton, Tomblin, & Bridges, 2012), 7% of the school population are considered to be dyslexic (Peterson & Pennington, 2012), and 3% of children have reading comprehension problems (Lervåg & Aukrust, 2010; M. Snowling, Cain, Nation, & Oakhill, 2009). Approximately 10% of children have a developmental language disorder (Laasonen et al, 2018) and mathematical difficulties are present in between 3 and 13% of children (Geary, 2013;Landerl & Moll, 2010). Long-term outcomes for individuals with learning problems include early disengagement from education (Balfanz, Herzog, & Mac Iver, 2007), low rates of employment (Bynner, Foudouli, & Parsons, 2005;De Beer, Engels, Heerkens, & van der Klink, 2014) and increased risks of mental health and behavioural problems (Emerson & Hatton, 2007).…”

Automated Phenotyping Tool for Identifying Developmental Language Disorder Cases in Health Systems Data (APT-DLD): A New Research Algorithm for Deployment in Large-Scale Electronic Health Record Systems

“…This is a common limitation in many public health records (Raghavan et al, 2018). Of course, when available, these details provide a further refined behavioral phenotype (Lancaster & Camarata, 2019), which would bring greater specificities to the inferences one can draw regarding the impact of DLD in a cohort (Evans et al, 2015;Laasonen et al, 2018;Newbury et al, 2011;SLI Consortium, 2002). However, most EHRs do not carry the more focused phenotypic descriptors such as diagnostic test information.…”

Narrative Skills of Monolingual and Bilingual Pre-School and Primary School Children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD): A Systematic Review

“…Given that children with DLD/SLI appear to be increasing in recent years in the classroom, storytelling assessment can generally provide specialists with important information on the language skills of these children. Especially for bilinguals with DLD storytelling tasks are challenging and can be used to differentiate them from their typically developing (TD) peers since lack of knowledge, normative data, and tools may often lead to over or underdiagnosis of language deficits in bilingual population (Laasonen et al, 2018).…”