Selective short-term memory impairment for verbalizable visual objects in children with Developmental Language Disorder.
Kids with DLD fail memory tasks only when the items can be named—check your visuals for hidden language demands.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Bryłka et al. (2024) compared short-term memory in kids with and without Developmental Language Disorder.
They showed pictures that could be named (like a cat, ball, or spoon) and pictures that could not.
Then they asked the kids to remember what they saw.
What they found
Kids with DLD did worse only when the pictures had names.
Their memory for no-name shapes stayed the same as peers.
Audiovisual clips with words also tripped them up, but silent shapes did not.
How this fits with other research
Fancourt et al. (2026) extends this idea to music. They found kids with DLD also struggle to remember tunes, but they lean on visual cues like hand signs or color notes to cope.
Dispaldro et al. (2015) saw a similar pattern years earlier in kids then called SLI. Those children were easily distracted when two pictures appeared close together, hinting that language problems can quietly spill into visual tasks.
Garcia et al. (2015) looked at a different group—kids at risk for non-verbal learning disability. Those kids had trouble binding colors and shapes, while the DLD kids in Martyna’s study had trouble only when the items could be named. The two findings sit side-by-side: one shows a pure visual binding issue, the other shows a language-loaded memory issue.
Why it matters
Before you label a task “non-verbal,” ask: can the child name the items? If yes, the job is partly language. Swap in silent patterns, gestures, or colors to get a cleaner read of visual memory and keep demands low for kids with DLD.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Developmental language disorder (DLD) affects the ability to acquire and make use of native language. Possible underlying cognitive mechanisms are related to memory functions. AIMS: The aim was examination of the relationship between visual short-term memory of objects as well as audiovisual short-term memory, and particular nonverbal and language abilities. METHODS AND PROCEDURES: The study included 7-9-year-old children with DLD and matched control group. Participants completed the Language Development Test, the Stanford-Binet IQ scale (SB5), and two short-term memory tasks: immediate recall of the visually presented pictograms and immediate recall of audiovisually presented sequences of syllables. OUTCOMES AND RESULTS: The results revealed diminished levels of short-term visual memory for objects as well as audiovisual memory in children with DLD. However, there were no group differences in the control task of WM. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: Results supported the idea of diminished abilities in children with DLD to perform mental operations on verbalizable visual objects. Importantly non-verbal working memory ability, which cannot easily be supported by verbal representations, is at typical levels. This suggests that verbalization ability should be taken into account in the assessment of seemingly non-verbal cognitive functions among children with DLD.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2024 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2023.104637