Current Studies
Developmental Language Disorder
DLD, or Developmental Language Disorder, is virtually unknown outside of the academic world, despite being as common among children as its well-known cousin, dyslexia, which has become a household word over the past few decades.
“I once wrote in a paper that DLD is a great mystery because these children have difficulty learning and understanding language for no obvious reason, something that comes with ease for most children,” says Tiffany Hogan, a professor in the Department of Communication Science and Disorders and director of the Speech and Language Literacy (SAiL) Lab. “Unfortunately, there are no organizations solely devoted to educating the public about DLD and few informational books or websites where people can learn about it.”
Hogan and her team of researchers are testing about 700 kindergarten students in several elementary schools in and around Boston, using a grant from the National Institutes of Health. The five-year study aims to raise public awareness of the condition and prevent students with DLD from slipping through the cracks.
Only about a third of DLD students are identified or are being treated in schools, despite it affecting about two students in every typical classroom of 24. Problem is, the condition is difficult to spot because many students with DLD can read just fine but have trouble following and understanding what they’ve heard or what they’ve read. “It’s harder to see what a child can’t comprehend, so it’s often missed,” Hogan says. “Dyslexia isn’t as hidden—it’s more obvious because a child can’t read printed words.” And to further complicate things, she says about half of students with DLD also have dyslexia.
Unlike students with ADHD, children with DLD don’t typically act out or fidget in class, the kinds of actions that command a teacher’s attention. Instead, they may be quiet or look like they’re daydreaming when, in fact, they may be trying really hard to follow the classroom conversation. Often, they’re mislabeled as lazy.
Hogan leads a team of collaborators—Julie Wolter from the University of Montana, Suzanne Adlof from the University of South Carolina, Jessie Ricketts from Royal Holloway, University of London, and Yaacov Petscher from Florida State University—to track the students with DLD from kindergarten to second grade. The same team, led by Adlof and including the MGH Institute’s Annie Fox, assistant professor of quantitative methods, is using a second NIH grant to follow a separate group of DLD students from second to fourth grade.
Hogan’s goal is to make DLD as familiar as dyslexia by helping to create an informative website and working with teachers and parents to help reduce the number of kids with DLD who are overlooked.