Error-monitoring: A predictor of future reading skills? A 3-year longitudinal study in children.

Investigation of the factors explaining individual differences in the acquisition of expert reading skills has become of particular interest these last decades. Non-verbal abilities, such as visual attention and executive functions play an important role in reading acquisition. Among those non-verbal factors, error-monitoring, which allows one to detect one's own errors and to avoid repeating them in the future, has been reported to be impaired in dyslexic readers. The present three-year longitudinal study aims at determining whether error-monitoring efficiency evaluated before and during reading instruction could improve the explanation of reading skills. To do so, 85 children will be followed from the last year of kindergarten to the second grade. The classic predictors of reading will be assessed at each grade level. Error-monitoring indices in domain-general and reading-related contexts will be derived from EMG data recorded during a Simon task in kindergarten and during both a Simon and a lexical decision tasks in the first and second grades. Findings concerning the role of error-monitoring on reading skills are expected to have an important impact on reading instruction to prevent reading difficulties in at-risk children and improve remediation to help children with reading difficulties.

Phonological and orthographic reading routes in French-speaking children with severe developmental language disorder.

PURPOSE: This study aims to assess written word recognition in French-speaking children with severe developmental language disorder (DLD), using a task of reading in silence. The objective is to determine if the balance between the phonological reading route and the orthographic route of these children is similar to that of typically developing children, on the basis of the so-called "dual route" model. METHOD: A visual lexical decision task was used in 19 children with severe DLD (average age: 11.01 years), 19 control children of the same reading level (RC children, average age: 8.12 years), and 19 children of the same chronological age (AC children, average age: 10.84 years). This task included words and pseudowords associated with these words: pseudohomophones, pseudowords phonologically close but visually distant to the true words, visually close but phonologically distant pseudowords. RESULTS: The groups did not process the pseudowords in the same way. Children with severe DLD were more successful than RC children for pseudohomophones. They tended to be less successful for phonologically close and visually distant pseudowords. They were similarly successful for visually close and phonologically distant pseudowords. Children with severe DLD were less successful than AC children with each type of pseudowords. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that children with severe DLD do not simply present a homogeneous delay in their ability to recognize written words but rather a deviant development compared to RC children, with a stronger reliance on the orthographic reading route compared to the phonological one. It is likely that the phonological difficulties of children with severe DLD have hindered the development of their phonological reading route which, in turn, have hindered the development of their orthographic route.

Word and pseudoword reading in children with specific speech and language impairment.

Children with specific language impairment frequently encounter difficulties in learning to read and in particular, in word recognition. The present study set out to determine the precise impact of language impairment on word reading skills. We investigated single-word reading in 27 French children with specific speech and language impairment (2 SLI). Precise quantification of reading levels in the 2 SLI group showed an average delay of 3.5 years. Approximately 90% of these children were affected by a reading disorder, whereas for the remaining 10%, reading performance was within normal limits. Word reading procedures are analyzed using the so-called 'dual route model', which proposes that reading is achieved through two processes, the phonological and the orthographic procedures. Group comparison analyses of 27 reading level-matched control children, revealed an increased lexicality effect in the 2 SLI group, indicating a specific deficit in the phonological procedure. Moreover, multiple case analyses revealed interindividual differences among the children with 2 SLI, with four reading subtypes. Approximately 60% of these children reached the standard levels expected of younger children with identical reading levels (delayed reading profile) in both procedures. Twenty percent displayed qualitatively different reading mechanisms, with a greater deficit in the phonological procedure (phonological profile). These children showed a severe impairment in language production at the phonological level. Ten percent exhibited a greater orthographic deficit (surface profile) and 10% had normal reading skills (normal profile). Further research is required to improve our understanding of the relationships between 2 SLI or specific language impairment and reading acquisition. The present results suggest that in clinical practice, both reading procedures should be exercised, with emphasis on the phonological procedure for children with more severe deficits in phonological production.

Atypical audio-visual speech perception and McGurk effects in children with specific language impairment.

Audiovisual speech perception of children with specific language impairment (SLI) and children with typical language development (TLD) was compared in two experiments using /aCa/ syllables presented in the context of a masking release paradigm. Children had to repeat syllables presented in auditory alone, visual alone (speechreading), audiovisual congruent and incongruent (McGurk) conditions. Stimuli were masked by either stationary (ST) or amplitude modulated (AM) noise. Although children with SLI were less accurate in auditory and audiovisual speech perception, they showed similar auditory masking release effect than children with TLD. Children with SLI also had less correct responses in speechreading than children with TLD, indicating impairment in phonemic processing of visual speech information. In response to McGurk stimuli, children with TLD showed more fusions in AM noise than in ST noise, a consequence of the auditory masking release effect and of the influence of visual information. Children with SLI did not show this effect systematically, suggesting they were less influenced by visual speech. However, when the visual cues were easily identified, the profile of responses to McGurk stimuli was similar in both groups, suggesting that children with SLI do not suffer from an impairment of audiovisual integration. An analysis of percent of information transmitted revealed a deficit in the children with SLI, particularly for the place of articulation feature. Taken together, the data support the hypothesis of an intact peripheral processing of auditory speech information, coupled with a supra modal deficit of phonemic categorization in children with SLI. Clinical implications are discussed.