Cognitive flexibility in children with Developmental Language Disorder: How do they draw nonexistent objects?

• In Event: Poster Session 01
  In Poster Session: PS 01 Topic - Developmental Disabilities

Abstract

Children often need to adapt their thoughts and behaviors to changing situations in their everyday life. In order to do this, they need cognitive flexibility. Cognitive flexibility is the ability to adapt thoughts and behaviors to new environments (Miyake & Friedman, 2012; Miyake et al., 2000). Previous studies investigating cognitive flexibility in children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) present contradictory findings. Some studies show that the performance of children with DLD is similar to the performance of peers with typical development (TD) (e.g., Im-Bolter et al., 2006; Henry et al., 2011). Other studies found that children with TD outperformed children with DLD (Farrant et al., 2012; Kapa et al., 2017, Roello et al., 2015). In the current study, cognitive flexibility was assessed in 5- and 6-year-old preschoolers with DLD (n = 23) and peers with typical development (TD; n = 50) using a nonexistent object drawing (NEOD) task (Adi-Japha et al., 2010; Karmiloff-Smith, 1990). The children were asked to draw a nonexistent man and a nonexistent house. The children with DLD did not differ from their peers with TD on simple category changes, which were comprised of changes in the size or shape of parts of the object, change of the whole shape of the object, and deletion of parts of the object. Nevertheless, children with DLD made fewer more complex, high-level category changes, which included same-category insertions, position exchange of object’s parts, and cross-category insertions. The difference between children with DLD and their peers with TD on high-level category changes was related to differences between the two groups in verbal short-term memory and inhibition. Furthermore, children with DLD made no changes to their original drawings of an existing man and house more often than their peers with TD. It is concluded that children with DLD aged 5 to 6 years show less flexibility on the NEOD task than age-matched children with TD. This difference in cognitive flexibility may be related to lower levels of verbal short-term memory and inhibition ability of children with DLD (Archibald & Gathercole, 2006; Weismer et al., 2000), or to their different use.

Authors

• Elma Blom, Utrecht University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Esther Adi-Japha, Bar Ilan University
  Presenting Author