Language and Executive Functions: A longitudinal study on children with Developmental Language Disorder

link between Executive Functions (EF) and language has long been
established, but the nature of this relationship remains unclear. Children
with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) frequently exhibit deficits
in EF; however, these impairments appear more pronounced when
assessed using auditory stimuli. This study aims to clarify whether training
EF in children with DLD through visual stimuli leads to improvements in
language outcomes. To achieve this, we conducted a double-blind longitudinal study evaluating the effectiveness of a three-month EF
training protocol using visual stimuli integrated into standard speech
therapy, comparing it against standard speech therapy alone. Our results
showed improvements in planning for both groups, and an improvement in
visual attention specifically within the experimental group. Crucially, only
the experimental group achieved a statistically significant improvement in
language. Taken together, these findings suggest that incorporating EF
training via visual stimuli can lead to faster and more significant language
improvements in preschool children with DLD than standard speech
therapy alone. This study aligns with the growing scientific consensus
positing a strong interdependence between EF and language during
development. Moreover, these findings support strength-based approaches
for treatment planning. Future research should expand on this sample size
(which was too small for broad generalization) and include control
conditions that evaluate EF training through the auditory modality as well.