Are items actively removed from working memory during free time in children with developmental language disorder?
Caroline Larson, Kimberly Crespo, Margarita Kaushanskaya and 1 others
PMID 35611864WHAT IT FOUND
Children with developmental language disorder did not have less free time than peers.
More free time improved their accuracy when interference was visual, but worsened it when interference was verbal, suggesting attention or encoding failures rather than slow processing.
Key findings
01Groups did not differ in free time across any condition, contradicting the prediction that slower processing speed leads to less free time.
02In the verbal-within condition, more free time was associated with worse accuracy for children with DLD, while more free time was associated with better accuracy for typically developing children.
03In the verbal-divided condition, more free time was associated with better accuracy for children with DLD, but there was no relationship between free time and accuracy for typically developing children.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The sample size for the DLD group was modest (21 participants), which may have limited the ability to detect small group differences. The study was conducted remotely, which may introduce environmental distractions or affect examiner-examinee interaction compared to in-person testing. Nonverbal ability was allowed to vary more than in some previous studies, which may have increased variance in the DLD group. The measure of free time was continuous and based on response timing, which may capture different aspects of the construct than fixed-interval designs.
Declared interests
The authors report no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that children with DLD struggle because they process information too slowly and need more time. The study found no difference in free time between groups, and more free time actually predicted worse verbal accuracy in children with DLD, pointing to attention or encoding issues instead.