Relationship Between Syntax Comprehension and Verbal Working Memory of Children with Developmental Language Disorders

Abstract

Working memory (WM) facilitates the choice of appropriate actions for coding stimuli from the environment, stores them for a short term and helps us use them purposefully in daily life. These rather complex but swift operations play a particularly important role in language related processing skills. This study aims to examine the relationship between complex syntax comprehension (CSC) skills and verbal WM in children with developmental language disorder and typically developing children. The study group comprised 12 Down Syndrome and 12 autistic and 24 typically developing children, who were matched in accordance with nonverbal intelligence. In order to evaluate the expressive language performance of the study group, language samples were collected and mean lenght utterance (MLU) was calculated. Children's verbal WM performance was established by using the nonword repetition list, and their CSC skills were evaluated by using the criterion referenced CSC skills assessment tool. The results showed that measurements such as chronological age, nonverbal intelligence and MLU are associated with verbal WM and CSC skills. In both groups, verbal WM and CSC skill were found to be related and the children in the developmental language disorder group had lower performance in both variables than their typically developing counterparts.