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.