TY - JOUR

T1 - Spelling well despite developmental language disorder

T2 - What makes it possible?

AU - Rakhlin, Natalia

AU - Cardoso-Martins, Cláudia

AU - Kornilov, Sergey A.

AU - Grigorenko, Elena L.

N1 - Funding Information: Acknowledgments This research was supported by the National Institutes of Health grant R01 DC007665 to Elena L. Grigorenko. Grantees undertaking such projects are encouraged to express freely their professional judgment. This article, therefore, does not necessarily reflect the position or policies of the National Institutes of Health, and no official endorsement should be inferred. We thank Roman Koposov, Anastasia Strelina, and numerous others from Northern State Medical Academy (Arkhangelsk, Russia) for their help with data collection.

PY - 2013/10

Y1 - 2013/10

N2 - The goal of the study was to investigate the overlap between developmental language disorder (DLD) and developmental dyslexia, identified through spelling difficulties (SD), in Russian-speaking children. In particular, we studied the role of phoneme awareness (PA), rapid automatized naming (RAN), pseudoword repetition (PWR), morphological (MA), and orthographic awareness (OA) in differentiating between children with DLD who have SD from children with DLD who are average spellers by comparing the two groups to each other, to typically developing children as well as children with SD but without spoken language deficits. One hundred forty-nine children, aged 10.40 to 14.00 years, participated in the study. The results indicated that the SD, DLD, and DLD/SD groups did not differ from each other on PA and RAN Letters and underperformed in comparison to the control groups. However, whereas the children with written language deficits (SD and DLD/SD groups) underperformed on RAN Objects and Digits, PWR, OA, and MA, the children with DLD and no SD performed similarly to the children from the control groups on these measures. In contrast, the two groups with spoken language deficits (DLD and DLD/SD) underperformed on RAN Colors in comparison to the control groups and the group of children with SD only. The results support the notion that those children with DLD who have unimpaired PWR and RAN skills are able to overcome their weaknesses in spoken language and PA and acquire basic literacy on a par with their age peers with typical language. We also argue that our findings support a multifactorial model of DLD.

AB - The goal of the study was to investigate the overlap between developmental language disorder (DLD) and developmental dyslexia, identified through spelling difficulties (SD), in Russian-speaking children. In particular, we studied the role of phoneme awareness (PA), rapid automatized naming (RAN), pseudoword repetition (PWR), morphological (MA), and orthographic awareness (OA) in differentiating between children with DLD who have SD from children with DLD who are average spellers by comparing the two groups to each other, to typically developing children as well as children with SD but without spoken language deficits. One hundred forty-nine children, aged 10.40 to 14.00 years, participated in the study. The results indicated that the SD, DLD, and DLD/SD groups did not differ from each other on PA and RAN Letters and underperformed in comparison to the control groups. However, whereas the children with written language deficits (SD and DLD/SD groups) underperformed on RAN Objects and Digits, PWR, OA, and MA, the children with DLD and no SD performed similarly to the children from the control groups on these measures. In contrast, the two groups with spoken language deficits (DLD and DLD/SD) underperformed on RAN Colors in comparison to the control groups and the group of children with SD only. The results support the notion that those children with DLD who have unimpaired PWR and RAN skills are able to overcome their weaknesses in spoken language and PA and acquire basic literacy on a par with their age peers with typical language. We also argue that our findings support a multifactorial model of DLD.

KW - Comorbidity

KW - Developmental dyslexia

KW - Developmental language disorder

KW - Phonemic awareness

KW - Rapid automatized naming

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84884817050&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1007/s11881-013-0084-x

DO - 10.1007/s11881-013-0084-x

M3 - Article

C2 - 23860907

AN - SCOPUS:84884817050

VL - 63

SP - 253

EP - 273

JO - Annals of Dyslexia

JF - Annals of Dyslexia

SN - 0736-9387

IS - 3-4

ER -