The relationship between oral language abilities and reading: The case of children with developmental language disorder.

AbstractOral language abilities have been reported to be related to reading development. This relationship seems to be determined by orthographic systems and reading development. Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) show reading difficulties, although most studies focus on reading comprehension. The present study has two main objectives: to examine the reading performance of a group of Spanish-speaking children with DLD compared to a chronologically age-matched group of typically developing children (TD); and to study the relationship between oral language abilities and reading performance using network analysis. They were administered five standardized tests to obtain measures about oral language abilities and reading performance. Results showed that children with DLD were less accurate and slower in reading than TD children. Meanwhile, the network analyses suggest strong and stable connections between reading and oral production in the DLD group. This finding confirms the importance of language abilities for reading acquisition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]