Background. A successful transition from primary to secondary school for typically developing (TD) children is associated with academic and psychosocial outcomes. Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) tend to have pervasive needs in both of these domains, yet little is known about their experience of this transition. We have no information concerning the transition for children with low language (LL). Aim.(1) To explore the expectations of the transition to primary school for children with DLD, children with LL proficiency, and their TD peers; (2) to examine the predictors of transition concerns for each group.Sample. Children aged 10-11 in the final year of primary school with DLD (n = 30), LL (n = 29), or TD (n = 48) were recruited from eight UK primary schools in the summer term.Methods. A battery of standardized language and psychosocial assessments, including the School Concerns Questionnaire (SCQ; Rice et al. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 81, 2011, 244), was administered.

Research on adolescent wellbeing in Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) has previously been examined through measures of parent (proxy) or self-reported wellbeing, but never has a study included both and enabled comparison between the two. The current study reports parent and self rated wellbeing of adolescents with DLD and Low Language (LL) ability, as well as their typically developing (TD) peers. It also examines consistency between raters and factors influencing correspondence. Adolescents aged 10–11 with DLD (n = 30), LL (n = 29) or TD (n = 48) were recruited from eight UK primary schools. A battery of standardized language, psychosocial and wellbeing assessments, including the KIDSCREEN-27 were administered. Adolescent ratings of wellbeing were similar across groups on three of the five wellbeing dimensions, but those with DLD had lower self-reported Autonomy and Parental Relations than their TD peers, and both the DLD and LL group had lower School Environment scores than their TD peers. By parental report, the DLD and LL group were considered to have lower wellbeing on all five wellbeing dimensions relative to their TD peers. Paired sample t-test analyses indicated a high level of variance between parent and adolescent reported wellbeing for multiple wellbeing domains, especially Psychological Wellbeing. Importantly, predictors of the level of agreement between parent and adolescent reported psychological wellbeing differed between groups: cognitive reappraisal and sociability predicted this level of agreement for adolescents with LL, while social competence predicted agreement in DLD and TD. This study emphasizes the necessity of allowing adolescents of all language abilities to report their own wellbeing, as their perspective does not align with that of their parents. It also highlights the importance of including the full spectrum of need when investigating the impact of language ability on consistency between proxy and self-reported wellbeing.

Purpose Reading comprehension is a key indicator of academic and psychosocial outcomes. Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) tend to find reading comprehension challenging. This study aimed to explore the literal and inferential (cohesive, elaborative, and lexical) comprehension of children with DLD, their typically developing (TD) peers, and, uniquely, a group of children with low language (LL) proficiency. Method Children aged 10–11 years with either typical development ( n = 16), LL proficiency ( n = 14), or DLD ( n = 14) were recruited from 8 primary schools. They completed a battery of standardized language and literacy assessments. Responses to literal and inferential questions on the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test–Second UK Edition (Wechsler, 2005) were analyzed. Results A disproportionate difficulty in answering inferential relative to literal questions was found for the DLD group compared to the LL and TD groups. Children with DLD were significantly poorer at elaborative inferencing than both their peers with LL proficiency and TD peers, but there were no group differences in cohesive or lexical inferencing. There was a significant positive association between inferencing ability and vocabulary knowledge, single word reading accuracy, grammatical skill, and verbal working memory. The importance of single word reading accuracy was especially evident as a partial mediator of the relationship between vocabulary knowledge and inferencing ability. Conclusions These results indicate that interventions targeting the reading comprehension of children with DLD should focus on elaborative inferencing skill. There are also clinical implications as the development of new standardized assessments differentiating between inference types is called for.

Background Developmental language disorder (DLD) has clear functional ramifications in the areas of social competency, emotion recognition, emotional well‐being and literacy skill, which have been found to persist from childhood to adolescence. These domains are important factors during the transition from primary to secondary school in typical development (TD). Nevertheless, there is a paucity of research on the transition from primary to secondary school for adolescents with DLD and low language (LL) ability. Aims To investigate the association between psychosocial domains, literacy skill and concerns about school during the transition to secondary school for adolescents with DLD, LL and their TD peers. The first research question examined whether levels of social competency, emotion recognition, emotional well‐being and literacy skill predicted school concern for the three groups. The second research question explored the longitudinal relationship between school concern and psychosocial and literacy indicators over the transition. Methods & Procedures Participants (aged 10–11 years) with DLD (n = 30), LL ((n = 29) and TD (n = 42) were recruited for this longitudinal study from eight UK primary schools. Standardized language and psychosocial assessments were administered in the spring and summer terms of the final year of primary school, and the autumn and summer terms of the first year in secondary school. Outcomes & Results Regression analyses showed pre‐transition school concern to be predicted by emotion recognition for the DLD group, by social competence and emotional well‐being for the LL group, and by social competence for the TD group. Post‐transition concern was predicted by emotional well‐being for the LL group; with no significant predictors for the DLD/TD groups. Path analyses revealed an association between literacy skill and emotion recognition for the DLD group. A developmental cascade illustrated a relationship between social competence and emotional well‐being for the TD group. Conclusions & Implications This study concludes that transition interventions must be differentiated according to language ability; support for DLD adolescents should focus on emotion recognition skill, provision for LL adolescents should centre on emotional well‐being, and TD participants should be particularly supported in the domain of social competence in advance of the move to secondary school. Additionally, this study emphasizes the importance of the inclusion of a LL group, as their outcomes cannot be predicted using DLD/TD research. WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS What is already known on the subject There is limited research exploring the transition from primary school to secondary for adolescents with DLD or LL ability. Research on TD has highlighted vulnerable domains at this time. As these key areas are evidenced spheres of difficulty in DLD and LL, there was a strong impetus for this study. What this paper adds to existing knowledge This study reveals differences between language ability groups in the predict...