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Kara Corley is a senior speech-language pathologist at Boston Children’s Hospital (BCH). Kara’s areas of interest include early language development, social communication, developmental language disorder and autism. In addition to providing evaluation and intervention to children from infancy to adulthood, Dr. Corley engages in program development and clinical research focused on intervention implementation and efficacy at BCH. Kara completed an SLPD at MGH Institute of Health Professionals in 2024 with a focus on establishing outcome measures to assess play and social skill development in children with DLD.

Financial: Kara Corley, SLPD, CCC-SLP receives a salary as speech and language pathologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and is receiving an honorarium from Bilinguistics for today’s presentation. Dr. Corley receives royalties from Brookes Publishing Company for her contribution of visuals to support pretend play in Shane et. al’s (2015) Enhancing Communication for Individuals with Autism: A Guide to the Visual Immersion System.

Non-financial – Kara Corley, SLPD, CCC-SLP does not have any non-financial relationships to disclose.

This presentation is designed to explore how visual aids can facilitate cooperative pretend play among preschoolers with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) and Executive Function (EF) difficulties. The session will discuss current theoretical understanding of how language, play and executive function skills develop in young children and may impact access to social interaction with peers. The need to support these skills early will be emphasized given the social and pragmatic comorbidities known to the school-age and adult DLD population. We will briefly touch upon the use of available assessment tools and outcome measures for play, social interaction and EF skills and pilot data on feasibility of use within a busy clinical setting.

A rationale (backed by current research) for the use of visuals to support cooperative play will be shared. This presentation will feature a developmental sequence of visual aids to help preschool-aged children progress with play skills. Special attention will be given to the “Play Plan,” a graphic organizer developed by Dr. Corley at Boston Children’s Hospital, which aids children in planning collaborative pretend play by outlining characters, settings, problems, and solutions with simple drawings. Case studies with video demonstration, an intervention protocol, goal development and pilot data will be shared.

This workshop will empower attendees with an understanding of EF challenges in preschool children with DLD and provide methodologies to support language, play, and EF development through visual aids for cooperative play.

Participants will be able to:
1. Describe the interaction between executive function, play, and language in preschoolers with DLD.
2. Recognize executive function difficulties during play in preschoolers with DLD .
3. Understand how and when to use visual supports for play in preschoolers with DLD and EF difficulties.

Time-Ordered Agenda
10 minutes– Introductions and Disclosures
15 minutes– DLD and EF research
15 minutes– Developmental Sequence of Visuals to Support Play
15 minutes– Play Plan with Case Videos
15 minutes– Goal Development, Outcome measures
5 minutes- Closing
15 minutes- Moderated question and answer session

Practitioners attending live events are required to participate through attendance which is verified by participation time via zoom registration and entry of a code at the end of the session to receive their certificate. For events including case studies, participants download, read, and utilize materials in order to participate.

Practitioners attending recorded sessions demonstrate learning and attendance by taking a quiz that is made up of learning that is spread out throughout the testing session. For events including case studies, participants download, read, and utilize materials in order to participate.