Insensitivity to response-contingent feedback in adolescents with developmental language disorder (DLD)

- Conservative actions preferred by adolescents with DLD during risky decision making.
- Suboptimal performance in DLD due to inefficient use of response-contingent feedback.
- Reduced motivational salience in DLD as a possible hypothesis awaiting testing.
- Findings implicating a role of the dopaminergic system in DLD.

The aim of the study was to investigate the efficiency of the use of response-contingent feedback in adolescents with and without developmental language disorder (DLD) by using the balloon analogue risk task (BART). The BIS/BAS scales were also used to evaluate a participant's responses to reward- or punishment-related events in everyday situations. The results showed that adolescents with DLD performed on the BART at a suboptimal level due to inefficient use of response-contingent feedback. Findings of the BIS/BAS scales also generate a possible hypothesis of reduced motivational salience for larger monetary outcomes in DLD. Given that dopamine plays an important role in modulating BART responding through the corticostriatal pathways, these behavioral findings implicate an association between dopamine and individual differences in language, including DLD. Future studies are needed to directly test whether people with DLD have reduced level of dopamine in striatal neural synapses, leading to dopamine-dependent learning difficulty.