Abstract
A comprehensive approach, including social and emotional affectations, has been recently proposed as an important framework to understand Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). There is an increasing considerable interest in knowing how language and emotion are related, and as far as we know, the role of the emotional regulation (ER) of parents of children with and without DLD, and their impact on their children’s ER is still unknown. The main aims of this study are to advance our knowledge of ER in school-age children and adolescents with and without DLD, to analyze the predictive value of expressive and receptive vocabulary on ER in school-age children and adolescents, and to explore parental ER and their effect on their children’s and adolescents’ ER. To cover all objectives, we carried out three studies. In the first and second study, expressive and receptive vocabulary were assessed in wave 1, and ER (Emotional Regulation Checklist -ERC- for children and Emotion Regulation Scale -DERS- for adolescents) was assessed in wave 2, 4 years later. Participants in the first study consisted of two groups of school-aged children (13 had DLD and 20 were typically developing children -TD). Participants in the second study consisted of two groups of adolescents (16 had DLD and 16 were TD adolescents). In the third study, the ER of 65 of the parents of the children and adolescents from study 1 were assessed during wave 2 via self-reporting the DERS questionnaire. Results showed no significant differences in ER between DLD and TD groups neither in middle childhood nor in adolescence. Concerning vocabulary and ER, expressive language predicted ER in school-age children but not in adolescents. Finally, parental ER explained their school-age children’s ER, but this was not the case in adolescents. In conclusion, the present data indicated that expressive vocabulary has a fundamental role in ER, at least during primary school years, and adds new evidence of the impact of parents’ ER upon their children’s ER, encouraging educators and speech language pathologists to include parents’ assessments in holistic evaluations and interventions for children with language and ER difficulties.
Highlights
Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), previously known as Specific Language Impairment (SLI), is a neurodevelopmental disorder that affects about 7.5% of the general population (Norbury et al, 2016)
No sex differences were found for emotional regulation (ER), neither when language groups were taken into account (DLD or typically developing (TD)) nor when language groups were considered
In the three present studies we investigated emotional regulation (ER) abilities in DLD populations compared to TD populations, by focusing on different developmental stages, different language abilities, and by using validated surveys
Summary
Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), previously known as Specific Language Impairment (SLI), is a neurodevelopmental disorder that affects about 7.5% of the general population (Norbury et al, 2016). Children with DLD use high frequency verbs and nouns more often than children with normal language abilities (Eyer and Leonard, 1995; Leonard, 1995) and have more reduced vocabularies than expected for their age (Rice et al, 1990). They score lower in vocabulary tests (Gray et al, 1999) and show less ability for receptive word learning in naturalistic contexts (Rice et al, 1994). It has been shown that they have a reduced sensitivity to the phonological and semantic features of words (Alt and Plante, 2006) and have difficulties mapping labels to new objects (Gray, 2004; Alt and Plante, 2006; Jackson et al, 2019; Ahufinger et al, 2021)
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