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Category: Project

Description: The aims of the current study were to asses (1) the presence and developmental persistence of manual gesture phonological deficits in developmental language disorder (DLD), and (2) the longitudinal relationship between early gesture phonological accuracy and later language and fine motor outcomes in DLD and typical development (TD). Preschoolers with DLD and TD engaged in a two year longitudinal novel gesture learning task in which they produced novel iconic gestures paired with or without a novel object referent. The children's gesture productions were behaviorally coded for phonological feature accuracy based on gesture handshape, path, and orientation. It was found that while children with DLD were less accurate in their novel gesture productions in comparison to their TD peers when preschool-aged, this gestural phonological deficit did not persist into the school-aged years. The DLD group's gesture phonological accuracy converged to typical levels by the final timepoint when the children were 7 years of age. However, all children regardless of whether TD or DLD showed relative weaknesses in the phonological feature of orientation that did not improve with practice or maturation. Finally, early handshape accuracy, orientation accuracy, and non-verbal intelligence were positively predicative of later language skill, but only for the children with DLD. No links were found between early gesture accuracy or nonverbal intelligence and later fine motor skill for both groups of children. Included in the supporting files are: a spreadsheet containing de-identified gesture phonological feature accuracy scores and standardized behavioral test scores, a PDF of the data collection protocol, a PDF of the phonological feature scoring sheet, and a PDF of the novel object pictures.