An interventional study of Supportive learning and Cascades in Developmental Language Disorder and Healthy Subjects, sponsored by Father Flanagan's Boys' Home. Recruiting at 1 site in United States. Open to participants aged 5 Years to 10 Years, including healthy volunteers. Per ClinicalTrials.gov, last updated 2025-05-13.
Sponsored by Father Flanagan's Boys' Home · Not applicable, Interventional, and Basic science
The goal of this clinical trial is to determine how memory and attention affect the ability of children with developmental language disorder (DLD) to learn and use new vocabulary.
The goal of this clinical trial is to determine how memory and attention affect the ability of children with developmental language disorder (DLD) to learn and use new vocabulary.
Aims 1-3 include children with DLD and healthy children with typical language development. The general hypothesis is that the memory and attention challenges that characterize DLD, but not healthy development, affect the robustness of word learning. Aim 4 includes healthy children only to simulate the cascading effects of weak word learning on the broader linguistic system. The main questions this clinical trial aims to answer are:
What is the role of linguistic long-term memory in children's ability to hold new verbal information in short-term memory? What is the role of attention in children 's ability to hold new verbal information in short-term memory? What are the cascading effects of short-term verbal memory problems on the integrity of the language system?
In Aim 1a, researchers will compare syllable repetitions when those syllables do or do not have English-like prosody and do or do not have meaning to see if knowledge of prosody and word meaning supports accurate short-term memory.
In Aim 1b, researchers will compare the repetition of adjectives and nouns when those words do or do not have English-like grammar (i.e., when they are presented as adjective + noun rather than noun + adjective) to see if knowledge of word order supports accurate short-term memory.
In Aim 2, researchers will compare the syllable repetitions when those syllables are presented with or without attention cues and with or without a delay of 500msec between presentation and response to see if attention facilitates accurate short-term memory. The delay condition is intended to increase load on short-term memory.
In Aim 3, all measures are observational. The researchers will assess the child's long-term memory of language, attention skills, and verbal short-term memory to see if children with DLD but good attention skills are able to perform well on short-term memory tasks.
In Aim 4, researchers will compare the ability of children to comprehend newly learned words that are taught via active retrieval or passive study. Active retrieval yields more robust learning, and passive study yields weaker learning. The goal is to compare how well children use those newly learned words to recall semantic category information (e.g., was it a bug or a bird) and comprehend sentences to see if the weak word learning has cascading impacts beyond learning the word itself.
121 studies on the registry are indexed under Language Development Disorders; 49 are open to participants now.
This study's planned enrollment of 120 is above the median of 74 across 106 interventional studies indexed under Language Development Disorders.
Browse Language Development Disorders studies →Father Flanagan's Boys' Home is the lead sponsor of 19 studies on the registry; 8 are open to participants now.
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Go through the criteria one by one — yes, no or not sure — and take the list to your doctor or the study team. Kept in this browser only.
Exclusion Criteria
In Aim 1a, the syllables to be repeated are presented with English-like prosody or list-like prosody.
Behavioral: Supportive learning
In Aim 1a, the syllables to be repeated will have meaning (e.g., neck) or no meaning (e.g., ba).
Behavioral: Supportive learning
In Aim 1b, the syllables to be repeated are English adjectives and nouns. They will be presented to obey English grammar (e.g., happy pencil) or not (e.g., pencil happy).
Behavioral: Supportive learning
In Aim 2, the syllables to be repeated will be presented in the 'baseline' condition or an 'attention-grabbing' condition. The attention grabbers are a reduction in the audio signal of 10dB (so that the child must listen carefully) and a visual cue (a cartoon character with large ears to cue listening carefully).
Behavioral: Supportive learning
In Aim 4, new words will be learned from instruction that involves active practice (high encoding condition) or passive study (low encoding condition).
Behavioral: Cascades
All interventions are manipulations to the stimuli that the child hears with the goal of discovering which manipulations support verbal learning.
The intervention is a manipulation of word instruction with the goal of discovering whether weaker word learning results in cascading effects on semantic category memory and sentence comprehension.
Accuracy of Syllable Repetition
Number of syllables pronounced correctly.
Time frame: Day 1
Accuracy of Word Comprehension
Number of correct answers on a 4-alternative-forced-choice word comprehension probe.
Time frame: Day 2
Plan to share: Yes — The study team will share research data generated and metadata and descriptors. The purpose is to make shared data meaningful and usable by other researchers. The data will be behavioral data generated from clinical measures and behavioral experiments. The data will consist of numbers (e.g., accuracy levels, scores), demographic descriptors (e.g., age and sex), and audio files of children's repetitions of word- and nonword syllables. De-identified, individual-level raw data will be shared publicly. Audio files will be shared under a data agreement only.
Supporting information: Study protocol, Statistical analysis plan, Informed consent form, Analytic code
Time frame: The start date is 2-20-2026. The end date is 50 years later.
Access criteria: To maximize the benefits of data sharing, the team will share data as broadly as possible to the extent consistent with applicable laws, regulations, rules, and policies. Anyone, including members of the general public, will have access to all of the de-identified data in the form of numbers (e.g., test scores). No video files will be shared. Audio files will be shared with those who qualify and seek permission via a data-sharing agreement. The data-sharing agreement provides for (1) a commitment to using the data only for research purposes and not to identify any individual participant; (2) a commitment to securing the data using appropriate computer technology; and (3) a commitment to destroying or returning the data after analyses are completed. The publicly available data and the data sharing agreement will be accessible in a public-facing Collection in Open Science Framework (osf.io).
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