The Under Recognised Condition that Holds Back Learning

Everyone knows how important literacy is, without a proficiency in reading and writing learning doesn’t work.

What’s more, an inability to read and write to an appropriate standard often leads to developmental and behavioural issues. Up to 80% of children with emotional and or behavioural problems have significant unidentified language and communication needs, while up to 60% of children with diagnosed language and communication needs experience emotional and or behavioural disorders.

And for primary students who are behind in their literacy, the demands of transitioning to high school can soon become overwhelming as their shortfalls in literacy are exposed when they contend with harder work.

Moreover, primary school children usually have one teacher and one classroom and that changes to many teachers, many classrooms and a complex timetable in high school.

High school places increased demands on their oral language and literacy - they are no longer learning to read but reading to learn, with an increased reliance on complex vocabulary and grammar.

As well as increased academic demands, this is a time of social growth and changes - again, relying on a foundation of language and communication.

Around 25% or one in four Australian children have language difficulties - this can be due to developmental variability, socioeconomic disadvantage, or speaking English as an additional language or dialect.

Approximately 7% of children will experience significant and persistent language difficulties, in the absence of another primary biomedical condition such as Autism Spectrum Disorder or intellectual disability, that impact their everyday functioning. This results in a diagnosis of one of the most common lifelong neurodevelopmental conditions known as Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) - impacting two children in every class of 30.

“These children are at higher risk of anxiety, depression, behavioural problems, and suicidal thoughts and behaviour than their peers,” says Associate Professor Suze Leitão from Curtin’s School of Allied Health.

The early identification of DLD and learning strategies to help with it will be addressed in a study that Associate Professor Leitão is recruiting for now.

“We need increased awareness and advocacy that children with low language proficiency or language difficulties and DLD exist,” she says.

There is an intimate relationship between language and emotion - the reliance on vocabulary and communication for expressing feelings.

Language is critical for emotional regulation: for identifying emotion, understanding emotion, describing emotion using correct vocabulary, understanding why or how you feel a particular way, and identifying and interpreting others’ emotions. Imagine how hard this is for a child who is having difficulties with language.

“Children with language and literacy difficulties are at increased risk of mental health but we do not fully understand the reasons why. This is the motivation for our research!

“We need to identify increased risk as early as possible, so we need to understand risk and protective factors, these potential links.

“Then…we will design language, literacy and mental health support and programmes that are accessible to children and young people with language difficulties and developmental language disorder. Most programmes are ‘talking therapies’ with high literacy demands - making them inaccessible to these children … even if they can find a service,” says Associate Professor Leitão.

Curtin is currently recruiting participants for a study of DLD, contact [email protected] to get involved.