DLD

In 2024/2025, Dr Mateja Gabaj published three papers investigating the personal narrative skills of children with DLD. Please email me if you would like a copy of any of these papers! 
Gabaj, M., Kuvač Kraljević, J., & Westerveld, M. F. (2024). Linguistic organisation and coherence in personal narratives of 10-year-old children with developmental language disorder. First Language, 45(2), 128-151. https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237241298163
Gabaj, M., Kraljević, J. K., & Westerveld, M. F. (2025). The personal narratives of Croatian-speaking children with developmental language disorder: Investigating the influence of emotional valence at linguistic, propositional, and macrostructure levels. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 56(3), 617-632. https://doi.org/10.1044/2025_LSHSS-24-00111
Gabaj, M., Kraljević, J. K., & Westerveld, M. F. (2025). Contribution of memory mechanisms and socio-emotional functioning to the production of personal narratives in children with and without developmental language disorder. Journal of Speech, Language & Hearing Research, 68, 4845-4864. https://doi.org/10.1044/2025_JSLHR-25-0004
What this paper adds: Students with DLD (ages 4-16, n = 64) made significant improvement in language skills during their time at school. These results provides some evidence of the effectiveness of a language specialist school. 
Ziegenfusz, S., Coughlan, A., Paynter, J., Simpson, K., & Westerveld, M. (2018). Measuring language progress in students with developmental language disorder while attending a specialist school. A retrospective analysis. Journal of Clinical Practice in Speech-Language Pathology, 20(1), 3-7.
Link to fulltext
I am very proud to be a member of the CATALISE consortium, a panel of 59 experts representing ten disciplines (including education, psychology, speech-language therapy/pathology, paediatrics and child psychiatry) from English-speaking countries. The Consortium published 2 influential papers (both open access):
  • 1. Bishop, D. V. M., Snowling, M. J., Thompson, P. A., Greenhalgh, T., & and the Catalise-consortium. (2017). Phase 2 of CATALISE: A multinational and multidisciplinary Delphi consensus study of problems with language development: Terminology. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 58(10), 1068-1080. doi:10.1111/jcpp.12721
    • 2. Bishop, D. V. M., Snowling, M. J., Thompson, P. A., Greenhalgh, T., & Catalise consortium. (2016). CATALISE: A Multinational and Multidisciplinary Delphi Consensus Study. Identifying Language Impairments in Children. PLoS ONE, 11(7), e0158753. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0158753