Retrieval-Based Word Learning in Developmental Language Disorder

Children with developmental language disorder (DLD; also referred to was children with specific language impairment) experience a significant deficit in language ability that is longstanding and harmful to the children’s academic, social, and eventual economic well-being. Word learning is one of the principal weaknesses in these children. This project focuses on the word learning abilities of four- and five-year-old children with DLD in an effort to understand the nature of these difficulties. The goal of the project is to build on our work accomplished in the first five years to determine whether, as we have found thus far, special benefits accrue when these children must frequently recall newly introduced words during the course of learning. The planned studies seek to increase the children’s absolute levels of learning while maintaining the advantage that repeated retrieval holds over comparison methods of learning. We also adapt our learning procedures to an illustrated storybook format to promote children’s engagement with the materials to be learned. Finally, we will determine if our repeated retrieval procedures continue to prove superior when the words to be learned move from the single-word level to appearing in sentences from the outset. Of special interest will be whether repeated retrieval activities narrow the differences between children with DLD and their typically developing peers relative to other word learning procedures. If the planned studies reveal larger word learning gains than current methods, repeated retrieval activities can serve as the basis for the development of new methods of treatment for children with word learning difficulties.