Developmental Language Disorder: Do Speech and Language Therapies Help to Address the Problem?

Abstract

Developmental language disorder (DLD) is a common language disorder affecting children (Laasonen et al., 2018). A child suffers from the disorder when the child exhibits difficulty in learning, understanding, and using a language. The disorder thus affects various aspects of a child’s development process, particularly those relating to speaking, listening, reading, and writing. As a language disorder, DLD affects the ability of a child to communicate due to difficulty in expressing meaning or interpreting communication from others. DLD can either be receptive, expressive, or both. A child suffers from receptive language disorder if they find it difficult to understand the meaning of the words used by others. It is expressive if the child finds it difficult to find the right words to help him/her convey meaning through talking. Based on its nature, several indicators can help show that a child suffers from DLD (Laasonen et al., 2018). Some of the common indicators include delayed ability to put words together to construct sentences, difficulty in learning new words and engaging in a conversation with peers, and general difficulty in following instructions due to poor interpretive ability to communicate messages.