Children with speech and language development problems can have greater difficulty regulating their emotions, a new study has found.
Problems when talking, communicating and expressing feelings are common among children and adolescents, in particular at an early age.
These difficulties increase in the case of those diagnosed with developmental language disorder, which affects approximately seven per cent of the child population.
A study by researchers from the Cognition and Language Research Group (GRECIL), included in the eHealth Center at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) and the University of Barcelona (UB), has analysed the existence of differences in emotional regulation in children and adolescents who have been diagnosed with specific language impairment / developmental language disorder (SLI/DLD).
“There are still few studies that assess the emotional and social dimension of the child and adolescent population with SLI/DLD, which is why we wanted to delve into the study of emotional regulation in this population,” said Nadia Ahufinger, lead co-author of the research along with Mari Aguilera, an expert from the University of Barcelona.
It is estimated that one in 14 children has developmental language disorder, and provision for support in this area has suffered badly as a result of the pandemic. The language difficulties of children with this disorder are not the result of other conditions, but they do affect the children’s social and/or academic development and have an impact on their day-to-day activities.
Having conducted three studies on more than 50 children and adolescents, in which aspects such as expressive and receptive vocabulary were assessed, the authors concluded that emotional regulation between girls and boys with and without SLI/DLD is similar both in childhood and adolescence.
There is, however, a tendency for those with SLI/DLD in childhood to have greater difficulty regulating their emotions.
“When analysing the relationship between language and emotional regulation, we observed that the expressive vocabulary that children have at five to seven years of age predicts their emotional regulation four years later, a relationship not seen during adolescence,” said Aguilera, adding that having a richer and broader vocabulary helps to clarify, understand and regulate emotions during childhood.
Likewise, the research also considered aspects such as the environment in which children grow up and develop, both during their childhood and adolescence, which is why the role of parents in the emotional development of their children was analysed.
“How the parents regulate their emotions is a very important factor in explaining their children’s ability to deal with emotions during childhood. However, it seems that, during adolescence, the influence of parental emotional regulation diminishes significantly,” the authors said.
Although no statistically significant differences were found in the study between the groups of children with and without SLI/DLD, the authors highlighted a trend during the pre-school years.
“Children with SLI/DLD are less empathetic, that is, they are less able to capture other people’s emotions and show their own emotions,” Aguilera said.
“Being able to express our emotional experiences in words will make it easier for us to elaborate and understand what is happening to us in our emotional world, and also to understand that of other people. These are key aspects for regulating our emotions in a useful and flexible way,” stressed Ahufinger.
The researchers pointed out that saying that children’s language difficulties are caused by parents who do not have time to talk to their children can lead to misunderstandings about the causes of the disorder and even create more anxiety.
“Language difficulties may be mediated by the disorder’s genetic factors,” the experts warned.
In relation to this type of developmental language disorder diagnosis in childhood and adolescence, the researchers advocate for promoting spaces in which to work with language in emotional situations, using stories and cartoons.
“Our research also indicates the importance of incorporating the family context to understand the person’s development, and allows us to start designing intervention strategies for the children that include all the significant figures, such as family and friends, both for emotional and linguistic aspects,” Aguilera and Ahufinger said.
