The Short-term Verbal Memory Endophenotype for Developmental Language Disorder Language Disorder

Father Flanagan's Boys' Home

Status: Enrolling

Conditions: Healthy Subjects; Developmental Language Disorder

Treatments: Behavioral: Cascades; Behavioral: Supportive learning

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other; NIH

Identifiers

NCT06968169

R01DC011742 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

24-18-XP

Details and patient eligibility

About

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.

Full 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 aims to answer are:

What is the role of linguistic long-term memory in children's ability to hold new verbal information in short-term memory? What is the role of attention in children 's ability to hold new verbal information in short-term memory? What are the cascading effects of short-term verbal memory problems on the integrity of the language system?

In Aim 1a, researchers will compare syllable repetitions when those syllables do or do not have English-like prosody and do or do not have meaning to see if knowledge of prosody and word meaning supports accurate short-term memory.

In Aim 1b, researchers will compare the repetition of adjectives and nouns when those words do or do not have English-like grammar (i.e., when they are presented as adjective + noun rather than noun + adjective) to see if knowledge of word order supports accurate short-term memory.

In Aim 2, researchers will compare the syllable repetitions when those syllables are presented with or without attention cues and with or without a delay of 500msec between presentation and response to see if attention facilitates accurate short-term memory. The delay condition is intended to increase load on short-term memory.

In Aim 3, all measures are observational. The researchers will assess the child's long-term memory of language, attention skills, and verbal short-term memory to see if children with DLD but good attention skills are able to perform well on short-term memory tasks.

In Aim 4, researchers will compare the ability of children to comprehend newly learned words that are taught via active retrieval or passive study. Active retrieval yields more robust learning, and passive study yields weaker learning. The goal is to compare how well children use those newly learned words to recall semantic category information (e.g., was it a bug or a bird) and comprehend sentences to see if the weak word learning has cascading impacts beyond learning the word itself.

Enrollment: 120 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 5 to 10 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

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).

Trial design

Primary purpose: Basic Science

Allocation: Non-Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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120 participants in 5 patient groups

Prosody

Experimental group

Description:

In Aim 1a, the syllables to be repeated are presented with English-like prosody or list-like prosody.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Supportive learning

Meaning

Experimental group

Description:

In Aim 1a, the syllables to be repeated will have meaning (e.g., neck) or no meaning (e.g., ba).

Treatment:

Behavioral: Supportive learning

Grammar

Experimental group

Description:

In Aim 1b, the syllables to be repeated are English adjectives and nouns. They will be presented to obey English grammar (e.g., happy pencil) or not (e.g., pencil happy).

Treatment:

Behavioral: Supportive learning

Attention

Experimental group

Description:

In Aim 2, the syllables to be repeated will be presented in the 'baseline' condition or an 'attention-grabbing' condition. The attention grabbers are a reduction in the audio signal of 10dB (so that the child must listen carefully) and a visual cue (a cartoon character with large ears to cue listening carefully).

Treatment:

Behavioral: Supportive learning

Encoding

Experimental group

Description:

In Aim 4, new words will be learned from instruction that involves active practice (high encoding condition) or passive study (low encoding condition).

Treatment:

Behavioral: Cascades