Reading Comprehension in Children With Specific Language Impairment: An Exploratory Study of Linguistic and Decoding Skills

The present study explored the relationship between linguistic and decoding skills in children with specific language impairment (SLI), inquiring whether reading comprehension is associated with linguistic or decoding skills in these children. Non-probability sampling was used. The sample consisted of 19 first grade Chilean students from 6 middle-low socioeconomic status schools in Santiago, Chile. They were 6 years old on average: 10 children with SLI (7 male) and 9 who displayed typical development (6 male). Participants were assessed on linguistic measures (mean length of utterance [MLU] and narrative), decoding, and reading comprehension. Descriptive analyses showed that the children with SLI exhibited difficulties in reading comprehension and decoding. Using Fisher’s exact test, it was found that the children with SLI and low reading comprehension performed more poorly than the control group in narrative comprehension, narrative production, and MLU. This association was not observed between reading comprehension and decoding skills. The results suggest that linguistic abilities play a major role in the reading comprehension of children with SLI.

[1]  Charles Hulme,et al.  The science of reading: A handbook. , 2005 .

[2]  K. Cain,et al.  The dissociation of word reading and text comprehension: Evidence from component skills , 2003 .

[3]  Philip B. Gough,et al.  The simple view of reading , 1990 .

[4]  Charles A. Perfetti,et al.  The Acquisition of Reading Comprehension Skill , 2008 .

[5]  L B Leonard,et al.  Grammatical morphology and the lexicon in children with specific language impairment. , 1999, Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR.

[6]  Kate Cain,et al.  The Precursors of Reading Ability in Young Readers: Evidence From a Four-Year Longitudinal Study , 2012 .

[7]  C. Domsch,et al.  Narrative skill and syntactic complexity in school-age children with and without late language emergence. , 2012, International journal of language & communication disorders.

[8]  Raquel T Anderson,et al.  The use of articles by monolingual Puerto Rican Spanish-speaking children with specific language impairment , 2005, Applied Psycholinguistics.

[9]  J Bruce Tomblin,et al.  A longitudinal investigation of reading outcomes in children with language impairments. , 2002, Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR.

[10]  Penny E. Lee,et al.  Reading comprehension in children with specific language impairment: an examination of two subgroups. , 2007, International journal of language & communication disorders.

[11]  Sally A Marinellie,et al.  Complex syntax used by school-age children with specific language impairment (SLI) in child-adult conversation. , 2004, Journal of communication disorders.

[12]  D. Bishop,et al.  Developmental dyslexia and specific language impairment: same or different? , 2004, Psychological bulletin.

[13]  I. Zink,et al.  Oral language and narrative skills in children with specific language impairment with and without literacy delay: a three-year longitudinal study. , 2012, Research in developmental disabilities.

[14]  M. Garraffa,et al.  Comparison of modalities in SLI syntax: A study on the comprehension and production of non-canonical sentences , 2010 .

[15]  A. Scheper,et al.  Narrative abilities, memory and attention in children with a specific language impairment. , 2012, International journal of language & communication disorders.

[16]  C. Stein,et al.  Narrative ability of children with speech sound disorders and the prediction of later literacy skills. , 2011, Language, speech, and hearing services in schools.

[17]  Denise Perpich,et al.  Mean length of utterance levels in 6-month intervals for children 3 to 9 years with and without language impairments. , 2010, Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR.

[18]  C. Parisse,et al.  Specific language impairment as systemic developmental disorders , 2009, Journal of Neurolinguistics.

[19]  Llorenç Andreu,et al.  El proceso lector en niños con antecedentes de retraso y trastorno específico del lenguaje , 2010 .

[20]  La acción inclusiva para la mejora de habilidades de lenguaje oral y de lectura inicial en niños con Trastorno Específico del Lenguaje (TEL) , 2012 .

[21]  J. Ricketts,et al.  Research review: reading comprehension in developmental disorders of language and communication. , 2011, Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines.

[22]  D. Bishop,et al.  A prospective study of the relationship between specific language impairment, phonological disorders and reading retardation. , 1990, Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines.

[23]  G. Conti-Ramsden.  Processing and linguistic markers in young children with specific language impairment (SLI). , 2003, Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR.

[24]  D. Bishop,et al.  Children Who Read Words Accurately Despite Language Impairment: Who Are They and How Do They Do It? , 2009, Child development.

[25]  C. Bellei.  Expansión de la educación privada y mejoramiento de la educación en Chile. Evaluación a partir de la evidencia , 2007 .

[26]  Susan E. Stothard,et al.  Is preschool language impairment a risk factor for dyslexia in adolescence? , 2000, Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines.