A Prospective Study of the Relationship between Specific Language Impairment, Phonological Disorders and Reading Retardation

TLDR

The study assessed language and literacy skills in 83 8½‑year‑old children who had language impairment at age 4. Children whose language problems resolved by 5½ years showed normal literacy, whereas those with persistent deficits had reading difficulties, poorer comprehension than accuracy, and continued oral language impairments; preschool syntactic competence predicted later literacy, while expressive phonological disorders had weak predictive value.

Abstract

Abstract Language and literacy skills were assessed in 83 8 1/2 ‐year olds whose language development had been impaired at 4 years of age. Provided that language problems had resolved by age 5 1/2 years, literacy development was normal, but many of the children who still had verbal deficits at 5 1/2 years of age did have reading difficulties and persisting oral language impairments later on. In these children, reading comprehension tended to be poor relative to reading accuracy. Syntactic competence in the preschool period accounted for a substantial proportion of the variance in literacy attainments, after allowing for the effects of non‐verbal ability. There were only weak links between expressive phonological disorders and later ability to read either meaningful text or non‐words.