Exercise Training in Children With Communication Impairments

This clinical trial study has two goals. The first goal is to establish fitness levels, participation in physical activities, and fine/gross motor abilities for children with development language disorder (DLD). DLD occurs in 1/13 children and children with DLD often have poorer fine/gross motor skills than those with typical development. The second goal is to determine whether physical exercise helps children with DLD and typical development to learn better and improve fitness and fine/gross motor abilities more than participating in restful play activities.

All children (DLD and typically developing) will undergo communication, fine/gross motor and fitness testing. Children will be randomly assigned to participate in an exercise program (n =20) or to a restful play program (n = 20). Both programs will take place 3x/week for 6 weeks and children will only participate in one of the two programs.

Children in the exercise program will do activities to train cardiovascular fitness, agility, balance, strength, and endurance while children in the restful play condition will do things like play with legos and color.

Researchers will compare changes in learning tasks and fitness levels for children (DLD and typically developing) who participated in the exercise program vs. restful play program.