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There is a growing body of work describing the psychosocial impact of reading difficulties. Educators play a key role in teaching children to read; therefore, it is important to consider how they view the impact of reading difficulties on young people. Given this, the aim of this research was to explore the lived experiences of educators who work with young people with reading difficulties. A qualitative phenomenological approach was adopted to develop an understanding of educators' perspectives of the impact of reading difficulties. Twenty educators were interviewed, and transcripts analysed thematically. The themes identified contributed to a compelling narrative regarding how educators perceived young people's response to a diagnosis of dyslexia, and a number of contextual factors that appeared to shape mental-health outcomes of young people with reading difficulties. In particular, educators' perceptions of young people's response to diagnosis appear to reflect a broader narrative of "difference" and "shame".

Purpose: The aim of the study was to evaluate the efficacy of a theoretically motivated explicit intervention approach to improve regular past tense marking for early school-age children with developmental language disorder (DLD). Method: Twenty-one children with DLD (ages 5;9-6;9 [years; months]) were included in a crossover randomized controlled trial (intervention, n = 10; waiting control, n = 11). Intervention included once-weekly sessions over 10 weeks using the SHAPE CODING system, in combination with a systematic cueing hierarchy to teach past tense marking. Once the first group completed intervention, the waiting control group crossed over to the intervention condition. The primary outcome was criterion-referenced measures of past tense marking with standardized measures of expressive and receptive grammar as the secondary outcome. Ancillary analyses on extension and behavioral control measures of morphosyntax were also conducted. Results: There was a significant Time x Group interaction (p < .001) with a significant difference in pre-post intervention improvement in favor of the intervention group (p < .001, d = 3.03). Further analysis once both groups had received the intervention revealed no improvement for either group on past tense production during the 5-week pre-intervention period, significant improvement pre-post intervention (p < .001, d = 1.22), with gains maintained for 5 weeks postintervention. No significant differences were found on pre- to postintervention standardized measures of grammar, or on extension or control measures. Conclusions: The efficacy of the theoretically motivated explicit grammar intervention was demonstrated. Results contribute to the evidence base supporting this intervention to improve past tense production in early school-age children with DLD, suggesting it is a viable option for clinicians to select when treating morphosyntactic difficulties for this population. Supplemental Material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha. 13345202, Compared with typically developing peers, children with developmental language disorder (DLD) are reported to have a slower pace of language development and difficulty producing and understanding language in the absence [...]

Purpose: Previous research into the working, declarative, and procedural memory systems in children with developmental language disorder (DLD) has yielded inconsistent results. The purpose of this research was to profile these memory systems in children with DLD and their typically developing peers. Method: One hundred four 5- to 8-year-old children participated in the study. Fifty had DLD, and 54 were typically developing. Aspects of the working memory system (verbal short-term memory, verbal working memory, and visual-spatial short-term memory) were assessed using a nonword repetition test and subtests from the Working Memory Test Battery for Children. Verbal and visual-spatial declarative memory were measured using the Children's Memory Scale, and an audiovisual serial reaction time task was used to evaluate procedural memory. Results: The children with DLD demonstrated significant impairments in verbal short-term and working memory, visual-spatial short-term memory, verbal declarative memory, and procedural memory. However, verbal declarative memory and procedural memory were no longer impaired after controlling for working memory and nonverbal IQ. Declarative memory for visual-spatial information was unimpaired. Conclusions: These findings indicate that children with DLD have deficits in the working memory system. While verbal declarative memory and procedural memory also appear to be impaired, these deficits could largely be accounted for by working memory skills. The results have implications for our understanding of the cognitive processes underlying language impairment in the DLD population; however, further investigation of the relationships between the memory systems is required using tasks that measure learning over long-term intervals. Supplemental Material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha. 13250180, Developmental language disorder (DLD) is a neurodevelopmental condition in which language problems occur in the absence of a known biomedical condition, intellectual disability, or acquired brain injury (Bishop et al., [...]

Background: Children with specific language impairment (SLI) often experience word-learning difficulties, which are suggested to originate in the early stage of word learning: fast mapping. Some previous research indicates significantly poorer fast mapping capabilities in children with SLI compared with typically developing (TD) counterparts, with a range of methodological factors impacting on the consistency of this finding. Research has explored key issues that might underlie fast mapping difficulties in children with SLI, with strong theoretical support but little empirical evidence for the role of phonological short-term memory (STM). Additionally, further research is required to explore the influence of receptive vocabulary on fast mapping capabilities. Understanding the factors associated with fast mapping difficulties that are experienced by children with SLI may lead to greater theoretically driven word-learning intervention. Aims: To investigate whether children with SLI demonstrate significant difficulties with fast mapping, and to explore the related factors. It was hypothesized that children with SLI would score significantly lower on a fast mapping production task compared with TD children, and that phonological STM and receptive vocabulary would significantly predict fast mapping production scores in both groups of children. Methods & Procedures: Twenty-three children with SLI (mean = 64.39 months, SD = 4.10 months) and 26 TD children (mean = 65.92 months, SD = 2.98) were recruited from specialist language and mainstream schools. All participants took part in a unique, interactive fast-mapping task whereby nine novel objects with non-word labels were presented and production accuracy was assessed. A non-word repetition test and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Fourth Edition (PPVT-IV) were also administered as measures of phonological STM capacity and receptive vocabulary, respectively. Outcomes & Results: Results of the fast-mapping task indicated that children with SLI had significantly poorer fast mapping production scores than TD children. Scores from the non-word repetition task were also significantly lower for the SLI group, revealing reduced phonological STM capacity. Phonological STM capacity and receptive vocabulary emerged as significant predictors of fast mapping performance when the group data were combined in a multiple regression analysis. Conclusions & Implications: These results suggest that the word-learning difficulties experienced by children with SLI may originate at the fast mapping stage, and that phonological STM and receptive vocabulary significantly predict fast mapping ability. These findings contribute to the theoretical understanding of word-learning difficulties in children with SLI and may inform lexical learning intervention.

Background: Children with specific language impairment are known to struggle with expressive grammar. While some studies have shown successful intervention under laboratory conditions, there is a paucity of evidence for the effectiveness of grammar treatment in young children in community settings. Aim: To evaluate the effectiveness of a school-based intervention programme for expressive grammar in 5-year-olds with specific language impairment. Method & Procedures: Thirty-four 5-year-old children attending a specialized school for children with language impairment participated in the study. Nineteen children received treatment for expressive grammar (experimental group) and 15 children received a control treatment. Treatment consisted of weekly 1-h sessions of small group activities in a classroom setting for 8 weeks. Techniques included direct instruction, focused stimulation, recasting and imitation. Outcomes & Results: Results were analysed at the group level and as a case series with each child as their own control in a single-subject design. There was a significant difference in grammatical performance pre- and post-treatment for children who received grammar treatment (Cohen's "d" = 1.24), but not for a group of children who received a control treatment. Further, no difference in performance was found in the equivalent time period prior to treatment, nor for an untreated target. Treatment success was more pronounced in children without articulation difficulties which interfered with their ability to produce the grammatical targets (Cohen's "d" = 1.66). Individual analyses indicated the treatment effect was significant for the majority of children. Conclusions & Implications: Individually targeted intervention delivered in small groups in a classroom setting was effective in improving production of expressive grammatical targets in 5-year-old children with specific language impairment. (Contains 3 tables and 6 figures.)

It has been hypothesized that children with specific language impairment (SLI) have difficulty processing sound-based information, including storing and accessing phonological representations in the lexicon. Tasks are emerging in the literature that provide a measure of the quality of stored phonological representations, without requiring a verbal response. This article describes the performance of children with specific language impairment (SLI) (n = 21), typically developing children matched for age (n = 21), and typically developing children matched for language (n = 21) on two measures of phonological representations--the Quality of Phonological Representations (QPR) and the Silent Deletion of Phonemes (SDOP)--and a measure of phonological awareness, the Sutherland Phonological Awareness Test: Revised (SPAT-R). As predicted the age-matched (AM) group demonstrated significantly better performance on all tasks than the SLI group. The AM group performed significantly better than the language-matched (LM) group on the SDOP and SPAT tasks, but not significantly differently on the QPR task. The SLI group performed significantly better than the LM group on both the SDOP and SPAT, but their performance on the QPR was significantly weaker than the LM group. The findings of this study provide support for the notion of lower quality phonological representations in children with SLI thus placing them at increased risk of ongoing language and literacy difficulties. (Contains 2 tables and 1 figure.)

Background: The development of children's speech, language, and literacy skills is considered to build on a robust and intact speech-processing system, with normally functioning skills at all levels of input and output processing, as well as storage. There are a range of tasks available that assess input and output processing skills, however there are few tasks described in the literature that require a child to reflect on and analyse the internal structure of their own phonological representations. Aims: This paper will describe the development of the Silent Deletion of Phonemes (SDOP) task. This task is designed to assess a child's ability to delete and manipulate sounds silently within their own stored representations while minimizing the impact of any output difficulties. Methods & Procedures: The SDOP task was presented to 69 typically developing mainstream Year 2 children (aged 7;2-8;1 years) as part of a battery of phonological processing skills and literacy measures. Outcomes & Results: Scores for the population of typically developing Year 2 children were normally distributed and above a basal level but not approaching ceiling. Performance on the SDOP was significantly correlated with other measures of phonological processing but not a measure of non-verbal ability. It was most highly correlated with the measure of phonological awareness as expected, as both tasks measure awareness of the internal structure of words. However, the SDOP provided more information about the accuracy and specificity of a child's underlying phonological representations. The SDOP explained a significant amount of concurrent variance in both reading and spelling performance beyond the variance accounted for by the predictors that have been used by researchers to date. In combination, the SDOP and rapid-naming measure accounted for 58.8% of variance in performance on the reading measure and 54.4% of variance in spelling performance. Conclusions & Implications: The SDOP task appears to be a valid and reliable tool to assess the internal structure of a child's stored phonological representations. Profiling phonological representations allows clinicians to explore children's speech-processing skills which may be particularly useful with children with complex literacy difficulties. (Contains 3 figures and 6 tables.)

Background: There is a great deal of evidence to support the robust relationship between phonological awareness and literacy development. Researchers are beginning to understand the relationship between the accuracy and distinctiveness of stored phonological representations and performance on phonological awareness tasks. However, many of the tasks currently used to assess the integrity of underlying representations are confounded by requiring spoken output. Aims: This paper describes the development of the Quality of Phonological Representations (QPR) task, a task that does not require speech output, and its evaluation in the context of a larger study examining predictors of literacy outcomes in Western Australia. Methods & Procedures: The QPR task was given as part of a larger task battery to a cohort of 235 mainstream children in the last term of their Preprimary year (average age = 5;5) and to 179 children at follow-up at the end of Year 2 (average age = 7;9). Outcomes & Results: Normative data for both accuracy and reaction time are presented in percentile tables (appendix B). In their Preprimary year, children were able to identify correct productions of multi-syllabic words (hits) on average 87.5% of the time, rising to an average of 93.8% in Year 2. As expected, children became quicker at making these judgements, reaction time shifting from an average of 1.1 s in Preprimary to 0.83 s in Year 2. A similar pattern was observed with the data for correct rejections. To make these judgements, the children had to identify a pseudo-word as an incorrect pronunciation by "Katie the computer". In the Preprimary year, children were able to reject correctly the pseudo-words on average 68.5% of the time, rising to an average of 81.7% in Year 2. As expected, children became quicker at making these judgements, reaction time shortening from an average of 1.4 s in Preprimary to 0.81 s in Year 2. The QPR task was shown to have moderate reliability and concurrent validity. Conclusions: The QPR task appears to be a useful and cost-effective addition to task batteries aiming to identify at-risk children in the early stages of schooling. The ability to profile children's phonological awareness skills and gain insight into their underlying phonological representation skills allows more informed goal setting and intervention planning. (Contains 4 figures and 4 tables.)

Parents of children with suspected Childhood Apraxia of Speech (sCAS, n = 20), Specific Language Impairment (SLI, n = 20), and typically developing speech and language skills (TD, n = 20) participated in this study, which aimed to quantify and compare reports of early vocal development. Via a questionnaire, parents reported on their child's early babbling and vocalizations, along with other developmental milestones. Consistent with previous anecdotal reports and theoretical predictions, the sCAS children were reported to be significantly less vocal, less likely to babble, later in the emergence of first words and later in the emergence of two-word combinations than the TD children. However, on many (but not all) of the items, the SLI children were reported similarly to the sCAS group. Notable exceptions where the sCAS group differed significantly to the SLI group were with the percentage of children reported to have babbled and the reported age of emergence of two-word combinations. The results support previous anecdotal clinical suggestions relating to children with CAS but highlight the need for longitudinal studies to analyse speech and language trajectories over time. (Contains 4 tables and 1 footnote.)

Background: Theoretical and empirical support now exists for the finding that many children with expressive phonological impairment experience problems in acquiring phonological awareness and early literacy skills. Few studies, however, have examined the long-term academic and literacy outcomes for this population, in particular as the students leave the final stages of primary school. Aims: The reported study forms the final stage of a longitudinal research project that tracked the phonological processing and literacy skills of a group of children with specific speech impairment from their first year at school (aged 5?6 years). The earlier data provided evidence of a relationship between speech impairment characterized by the presence of non-developmental error processes and weaker phonological awareness and literacy skills in the first 2?3 years at school. It was hypothesized that the effect of this relationship would continue to be apparent as the students completed the final stages of primary school. Methods & Procedures: Fourteen of the original set of 36 students were available for reassessment of their phonological processing, reading and spelling skills at age 12?13 years. Outcomes & Results: Those children with an original classification of nondevelopmental speech errors performed significantly more poorly than those with an original classification of developmental errors on phonological awareness and reading comprehension measures. Reading accuracy and spelling scores also showing a similar trend. Conclusions: These findings provide further evidence for the long-term impact of speech impairment. The follow-up data demonstrated ongoing difficulties for students who entered school with expressive speech impairment, particularly those whose speech errors were characterized by non-developmental error processes. The impact was apparent on tasks measuring phonological awareness, reading accuracy and spelling (skills that depend on good pprocessing skills and clear underlying phonological representations). Weaknesses in reading comprehension were also found. These findings have implications for the early identification of those at risk. In addition, intervention approaches for young children with expressive speech difficulties demonstrating these patterns of error should address weak underlying phonological representations and develop phonological awareness skills.

Background Children with specific language impairment (SLI) often experience word-learning difficulties, which are suggested to originate in the early stage of word learning: fast mapping. Some previous research indicates significantly poorer fast mapping capabilities in children with SLI compared with typically developing (TD) counterparts, with a range of methodological factors impacting on the consistency of this finding. Research has explored key issues that might underlie fast mapping difficulties in children with SLI, with strong theoretical support but little empirical evidence for the role of phonological short-term memory (STM). Additionally, further research is required to explore the influence of receptive vocabulary on fast mapping capabilities. Understanding the factors associated with fast mapping difficulties that are experienced by children with SLI may lead to greater theoretically driven word-learning intervention. Aims To investigate whether children with SLI demonstrate significant difficulties with fast mapping, and to explore the related factors. It was hypothesized that children with SLI would score significantly lower on a fast mapping production task compared with TD children, and that phonological STM and receptive vocabulary would significantly predict fast mapping production scores in both groups of children. Methods & Procedures Twenty-three children with SLI (mean = 64.39 months, SD = 4.10 months) and 26 TD children (mean = 65.92 months, SD = 2.98) were recruited from specialist language and mainstream schools. All participants took part in a unique, interactive fast-mapping task whereby nine novel objects with non-word labels were presented and production accuracy was assessed. A non-word repetition test and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Fourth Edition (PPVT-IV) were also administered as measures of phonological STM capacity and receptive vocabulary, respectively. Outcomes & Results Results of the fast-mapping task indicated that children with SLI had significantly poorer fast mapping production scores than TD children. Scores from the non-word repetition task were also significantly lower for the SLI group, revealing reduced phonological STM capacity. Phonological STM capacity and receptive vocabulary emerged as significant predictors of fast mapping performance when the group data were combined in a multiple regression analysis. Conclusions & Implications These results suggest that the word-learning difficulties experienced by children with SLI may originate at the fast mapping stage, and that phonological STM and receptive vocabulary significantly predict fast mapping ability. These findings contribute to the theoretical understanding of word-learning difficulties in children with SLI and may inform lexical learning intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]