Identifying Developmental Language Disorder in the Context of Dialect

The podcast episode discusses the importance of identifying developmental language disorder (DLD) within the context of a child's dialect. It emphasizes the need to distinguish between dialects and disorders and to avoid misidentifying children who speak a different dialect as having an impairment. The speaker shares her experience of studying African American English and Southern White English dialects in rural Louisiana and highlights the unique features and challenges associated with each dialect. The episode also mentions the use of language probes, such as the sentence recall task and past tense probe, which can assist in diagnosing DLD within specific dialects.