The Impact of Manipulating Attentional Shifting Demands on Preschool Children With Specific Language Impairment

Abstract

Purpose This study investigated attentional shifting in preschool children with specific language impairment (SLI) compared to their typically developing peers. Children's attentional shifting capacity was assessed by varying attentional demands. Method Twenty-five preschool children with SLI and 25 age-matched, typically developing controls participated. A behavioral task measuring attentional shifting within and across multiple dimensions (auditory, linguistic, and visual) was employed. Demands on attentional shifting were increased based on input dimension (low load: staying within dimension; medium load: shifting between 2 dimensions; and high load: shifting among 3 dimensions). Results Compared to controls, the group with SLI made more erroneous responses and exhibited longer response times. Although both groups' error rates were similarly affected by shifting compared to nonshifting trials, their response speed was not. The group with SLI exhibited a larger comparative decrement to their response speed in the high–attentional load condition. Discussion When demands on attentional shifting increase, children with SLI struggle to shift their attention as efficiently to changing stimuli as their unimpaired peers. Potential implications for the assessment and treatment of this population are discussed.

Variability of Executive Function Performance in Preschoolers with Developmental Language Disorder

“…Compared with peers with typical language abilities, children with DLD show equivalent switching costs on trail-making tasks. 26,29 Using a different shifting task, Aljahlan and Spaulding 46 also found that preschoolers with DLD performed less accurately on both switch and nonswitch trials compared with peers with typical language, but the magnitude of the decrease in accuracy on switch trials compared with nonswitch trials (i.e., switching cost) did not differ between the two groups. However, the reaction time of participants with DLD increased significantly more on switch trials relative to the reaction time of typically developing participants.…”

“…Other studies report equivalent group performance, but even when children with DLD perform as accurately as peers with typical language, they may still have less efficient shifting abilities. 46 Indeed, although the overall effect was small, there was a significant difference between children with DLD and typically developing children in a meta-analysis of shifting studies. 40…”

Evaluating Part V of the German version of the Token Test as a screening of specific language impairment in preschoolers

“…Whereas typical development of executive functions in young age is associated with development of the prefrontal cortex (for a review, see Garon et al, 2008), children with SLI were previously shown to exhibit limitations in cognitive abilities that heavily rely on prefrontal brain regions. They show, for example, weaker performance in cognitive aspects such as the ability to shift and maintain your focus (attentional shifting and sustained selective attention); the ability to avoid distraction or refraining from a dominating, incorrect response (inhibition/inhibitory control); the ability to keep information in memory as well as use it for mental operations (short-term/working memory); the ability to stick to rules and adjust to changing rules or task demands (use of rules and cognitive flexibility); or the ability to analyze given information in a way that leads to adequate responses (planning ability; see, for example, Aljahlan & Spaulding, 2019;Kapa et al, 2017;Roello et al, 2015). In the notion of the authors, impairments in one or more of these abilities could lead to worse results on the Token Test, as the task requires, with increasing difficulty across parts, to hold the target objects in mind and to manipulate them, to maintain and shift the attentional focus between objects, to withhold touching objects that should be excluded from actions, to change between including or excluding objects from actions, and to analyze all information of a command in order to respond adequately.…”

“…Besides these characteristic symptoms, SLI is increasingly associated with lower performance in different cognitive domains such as sustained selective attention, attentional shifting, working memory, inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility, problem solving, and planning (e.g., Aljahlan & Spaulding, 2019;Hughes, Turkstra, & Wulfeck, 2009;Kapa, Plante, & Doubleday, 2017;Pauls & Archibald, 2016;Roello, Ferretti, Colonnello, & Levi, 2015;Spaulding, 2010;Willinger et al, 2017). In this context, it was shown that these deficits are at least partly independent of language impairment severity or linguistic demand of used tasks (e.g., Pauls & Archibald, 2016).…”

“…In this context, it was shown that between ages 5 and 8 typically developing children but also children with SLI each show relatively stable language development trajectories (Norbury et al, 2017), whereas a greater variability regarding language performance in preschoolers was seen compared to school-aged children (Schmitt et al, 2017). In preschool age, besides language processing, further cognitive abilities that heavily rely on prefrontal brain regions develop increasingly, such as working memory, and cognitive flexibility in terms of shifting ability, inhibition, attentional control, and planning (e.g., Best & Miller, 2010;Garon, Bryson, & Smith, 2008;Jurado & Rosselli, 2007), all of which were shown to be less well developed in SLI (e.g., Aljahlan & Spaulding, 2019;Kapa et al, 2017;Pauls & Archibald, 2016).…”