Specific language impairment (SLI) and reading development in early school years

Abstract

Specific language impairment (SLI) is a condition that affects children’s emerging language skills. Many different language skills can be affected in SLI, but not all individuals with SLI have the same set of difficulties. As a result, SLI is a highly heterogeneous condition. The ability to read and understand written text is a higher function of language, which has its base on the language skills that may be affected by SLI. Previous studies suggest that children with SLI are at risk of developing literacy difficulties at school age. To test this hypothesis a longitudinal follow-up study of SLI was performed in an urban city in Finland. Forty-three children diagnosed with SLI completed tests for lexical and rapid automatized naming (RAN) and reading ability (technical reading and reading comprehension). Children were tested in schools in years one to three, at the end of each school year. At the age of 10 (year 3) children with SLI had relatively weak technical reading abilities with somewhat stronger reading comprehension abilities and concomitant lexical retrieval impairments, but age-appropriate RAN abilities. These findings lend further support to the view that SLI imposes a considerable risk in learning to read. Even in an orthographically highly transparent language, such as Finnish, technical reading skills often seem to remain poor. In this study, the findings on the development of lexical retrieval abilities support the Matthew-effect model in reading development (Stanovich, 1986), while the results of the development of RAN abilities support the developmental lag theory (Stanovich et al., 1988). All in all, these children with SLI had great difficulties in learning to read, which places them at a serious risk of developing concomitant learning problems.

Type and Duration of Home Activities of Children with Specific Language Impairment: Case Control Study Based on Parents’ Reports

“…The main weakness of this study was the small number of the participants. Partially this was due to our relatively small cohort [30,31] and, thus, the number of case-control pairs remained small. This hampers possibilities to make clearcut conclusions about parameters which did not turn out to differ statistically significantly and allows only preliminary conclusions to be drawn from these parts of the data.…”

“…The information of the pilot survey also conducted to the time scoring method used. Finally, the parents in this study filled in, during one week, daily questionnaires (see Appendix) where the observed time was between 5 pm and 9.30 pm each day and it was divided into [29][30][31]. The research included all children born in 1998 and 1999 who were diagnosed in specialist health care in Helsinki University Central Hospital as having SLI (ICD10 diagnosis F80.1 or F80.2) living in the city of Vantaa, Finland.…”

Efficiency of Executive Functions and Literacy Among Children With Specific Language Impairment

“…The typical symptoms manifested by children with SLI initially resemble a delay in the development of speech; however, over time, the children exhibit a constellation of problems that can affect the following diverse aspects of language competencies: phonological, lexical, morphological, syntactic or pragmatic-semantic (Leonard, 2014). Notably, a diagnosis of SLI is a significant risk factor for the occurrence of reading and writing difficulties in school-aged children (Isoaho, Kauppila, Launonen, 2015, Williams, Larkin, Blaggan, 2013. Other impairments associated with this risk factor include problems with interpersonal relationships and irregularities in emotions and behaviour, particularly in patients with severe and difficult-to-treat forms of the disorder (Conti-Ramsden et al, 2013;Redmond & Rice, 1998).…”

Dificultades de lectura en niños con Trastorno Específico del Lenguaje

“…La capacidad de leer y entender un texto escrito tiene su base en las habilidades del lenguaje oral, por lo que pueden verse afectadas por el Trastorno Especifico de Lenguaje (TEL), que constituye una "alteración significativa en la adquisición y desarrollo del lenguaje, que no está justificada por ninguna causa física, neurológica, intelectual ni sensorial, en unas condiciones sociales adecuadas" (Aguado, Coloma, Martínez, Mendoza, & Montes, 2015, p.147-148). Por ello, no es sorprendente que los niños con TEL manifiesten dificultades en la lectura (Bishop & Snowling, 2004;Catts, Bridges, Little & Tomblin, 2008;Isoaho, Kauppila, & Launonen, 2016).…”