Impaired comprehension in the clinical picture of children with developmental language disorder

Objectives. The objectives of this study were (1) to identify the extent to which impaired sentence comprehension is present in a cohort of children with developmental language disorder (DLD), (2) to explore how the TEPO scores of children with DLD correlate with test scores from other language diagnostic tools administered to this cohort, as well as with the overall composite score, and (3) to use cluster analysis for TEPO test results in children <= 5th percentile to determine the severity of comprehension impairment. Sample and setting. Between 2021 and 2023, 114 children aged 69 months (f 0.6) diagnosed with developmental language disorder were included in the study. The children were assessed using a battery of seven tests, with the standardized TEPO comprehension test used to evaluate sentence comprehension. Hypotheses. Authors hypothesized that (1) the TEPO test would correlate with children's age and (2) the TEPO test would show the strongest correlation with the OPAV sentence repetition test and the Morphology test. Statistical analyses. Descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and K-means cluster analysis were performed. The Shapiro-Wilk test was used to assess the normality of data distribution. Spearman's correlation coefficient and the Kruskal-Wallis test were used to analyze the correlation between test results and demographic parameters within the entire sample. Statistical tests were evaluated at a significance level of 0.05. Results. A high degree of impaired sentence comprehension was found in children with developmental language disorder, affecting 82% of the sample. The cluster analysis of TEPO test results categorized children into four severity levels: (1) normal performance (21 children, scoring between-9 and 0 points above the TEPO cut-off), (2) mild impairment (43 children, scoring 1-6 points below the TEPO cut-off), (3) moderate impairment (38 children, scoring 4-17 points below the TEPO cut-off), and (4) severe impairment (12 children, scoring 18 or more points below the TEPO cut-off). A strong correlation was found between the TEPO test and the Morphology test (rs = 0.57, p < 0.001) and between TEPO and the OPAV test (rs = 0.56, p < 0.001). The correlation between TEPO and the composite score was also strong (rs = 0.55, p < 0.01). Limitations. The limitations of this study include its geographical restriction to the areas of Ostrava and Cesky Brod, which may affect the generalizability of the results. Additionally, not all children underwent a psychological examination for intelligence and ADHD.