Individual differences in psychosocial difficulties for children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD)

Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) affects ~7% of children.  It is characterised by problems with using and understanding oral language.  On the whole, children with DLD have more psychosocial difficulties compared to those without DLD.  Such adverse outcomes are not inevitable. There is considerable heterogeneity in the disorder.  That is, children with DLD differ from each other in the severity and types of psychosocial difficulties.  During my talk, I will discuss some recent work where we identified protective factors and sub-groups of children with DLD with differing profiles of psychosocial difficulties.  I will also provide some preliminary evidence to suggest that DLD may increase the concomitant psychosocial difficulties through shared genetic markers rather than through direct environmental effects per se informing our understanding of the routes to adverse psychosocial outcomes in children with DLD.