Oral language and narrative skills in children with specific language impairment with and without literacy delay: a three-year longitudinal study.

This longitudinal study compared the development of oral language and more specifically narrative skills (storytelling and story retelling) in children with specific language impairment (SLI) with and without literacy delay. Therefore, 18 children with SLI and 18 matched controls with normal literacy were followed from the last year of kindergarten (mean age=5 years 5 months) until the beginning of grade 3 (mean age=8 years 1 month). Oral language tests measuring vocabulary, morphology, sentence and text comprehension and narrative skills were administered yearly. Based on first and third grade reading and spelling achievement, both groups were divided into a group with and a group without literacy problems. Results showed that the children with SLI and literacy delay had persistent oral language problems across all assessed language domains. The children with SLI and normal literacy skills scored also persistently low on vocabulary, morphology and story retelling skills. Only on listening comprehension and storytelling, they evolved towards the level of the control group. In conclusion, oral language skills in children with SLI and normal literacy skills remained in general poor, despite their intact literacy development during the first years of literacy instruction. Only for listening comprehension and storytelling, they improved, probably as a result of more print exposure.

Development of phonological processing skills in children with specific language impairment with and without literacy delay: a 3-year longitudinal study.

PURPOSE: To compare the development of phonological skills in children with specific language impairment (SLI) with and without literacy delay and to examine whether kindergarten phonological skills could discriminate these 2 groups. METHOD: In a longitudinal study, 8 children with SLI and literacy delay, 10 children with SLI and normal literacy, and 14 typically developing children were studied from the last year of kindergarten to the start of Grade 3. A wide range of phonological tasks (phonological awareness [PA], verbal short-term memory [vSTM], and rapid automatized naming [RAN]) were administered yearly. RESULTS: The SLI group with literacy delay scored significantly lower than the typically developing children on almost all phonological tasks in all grades, whereas the SLI group with normal literacy scored significantly lower only on demanding PA and vSTM tasks. A combination of kindergarten PA and RAN skills could correctly classify 75% of the children with SLI. By including vSTM, the discriminatory value did not increase. CONCLUSIONS: Children with SLI and normal literacy at age 8;1 [years;months] continued to have difficulties with demanding PA and vSTM tasks. Children with SLI and poor PA and RAN in kindergarten were at high risk of developing literacy problems in a transparent orthography.

Auditory processing and speech perception in children with specific language impairment: relations with oral language and literacy skills.

This longitudinal study investigated temporal auditory processing (frequency modulation and between-channel gap detection) and speech perception (speech-in-noise and categorical perception) in three groups of 6 years 3 months to 6 years 8 months-old children attending grade 1: (1) children with specific language impairment (SLI) and literacy delay (n = 8), (2) children with SLI and normal literacy (n = 10) and (3) typically developing children (n = 14). Moreover, the relations between these auditory processing and speech perception skills and oral language and literacy skills in grade 1 and grade 3 were analyzed. The SLI group with literacy delay scored significantly lower than both other groups on speech perception, but not on temporal auditory processing. Both normal reading groups did not differ in terms of speech perception or auditory processing. Speech perception was significantly related to reading and spelling in grades 1 and 3 and had a unique predictive contribution to reading growth in grade 3, even after controlling reading level, phonological ability, auditory processing and oral language skills in grade 1. These findings indicated that speech perception also had a unique direct impact upon reading development and not only through its relation with phonological awareness. Moreover, speech perception seemed to be more associated with the development of literacy skills and less with oral language ability.

Is there a common neuroanatomical substrate of language deficit between autism spectrum disorder and specific language impairment?

Discussion of an overlap between specific language impairment (SLI) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is on going. The most intriguing overlap between both phenotypes is the similarity in the observed language deficits described in SLI and a subgroup of ASD with co-occurring linguistic impairment, ASD-LI. Examining whether a similar neuroanatomical substrate underlies this phenotypical linguistic overlap, we studied the white matter microstructural properties of the superior longitudinal fascicle (SLF) of 19 ASD-LI adolescents (mean age 13.8 ± 1.6 years) and 21 age-matched controls and compared them with 13 SLI children (mean age 10.1 ± 0.4 years) and 12 age-matched controls. A linguistic profile assessment and a diffusion tensor imaging analysis of the SLF were performed. Linguistic testing revealed a mixed receptive-expressive disorder profile in both groups, confirming their overlap at phenotypical level. At neuroanatomical level, no significant differences in mean SLF fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean SLF apparent diffusion coefficient values between ASD-LI participants and controls were seen. By contrast, the mean SLF FA was significantly reduced in the SLI children as compared with their controls. The observation of structural SLF disturbances in SLI but not in ASD-LI suggests the existence of a different neuroanatomical substrate for the language deficits in both disorders.

Towards a further characterization of phonological and literacy problems in Dutch-speaking children with dyslexia.

This longitudinal study examined the development of phonology and literacy in Dutch-speaking children at family risk of dyslexia and in matched controls. Measures were administered in kindergarten (before the start of formal reading instruction), in first and in third grade. Children, diagnosed with dyslexia in third grade, showed impaired phonological awareness (PA), verbal short-term memory, and rapid automatic naming ability (RAN) at all time points, with the deficit in PA aggravating over time. These children also performed more poorly in letter knowledge, word and nonword reading accuracy and speed, and spelling at each time point. Children at family risk of dyslexia who did not fulfil criteria for dyslexia, scored more poorly than low-risk controls on the literacy and phonological measures that required the most fine-grained phonological representations. This suggests that the family risk of dyslexia is continuous rather than discrete. Hierarchical regression analyses demonstrated that PA and RAN were initially the most important instigators of reading accuracy and reading speed, respectively. After 2 years of reading instruction, only RAN predicted reading speed and accuracy. Letter knowledge, reading accuracy, and reading speed also contributed to the development of PA.