ACQ Vol 11 no 2 2009

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ACQ Volume 11, Number 2 2009 125
kindergarten or even earlier if possible. When assessing
children’s literacy skills Catts et al. stress there is a need
to go beyond the traditional early literacy variables of
phonological awareness and letter knowledge and to include
other aspects of language development such as vocabulary,
grammar and/or narration to determine which children may
be at risk for future reading difficulties. Given the persistent
difficulties in reading ability in children who are off to a slow
start, Catts et al. finish by stressing the importance of early
identification and for implementing appropriate intervention
to reduce the long-term consequences of reading difficulties.
Predicting later language and early reading
outcomes in at-risk children.
Flax, J., Realpe-Bonilla, T., Roesler, C., Choudhury, N., &
Benasich, A. (2009). Using early standardised language
measures to predict later language and early reading
outcomes in children at high risk for language-learning
impairments. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 42(1), 61–75.
Mary Claessen
This paper describes a longitudinal study of two groups of
children: a group of 40 children with a family history (FH+) of
language learning impairments (LLI) and a control group of
59 children with no family history of LLI (FH–). The aims of
the study were: 1) to compare the language profiles of the
two groups from 2 years through 7 years, and 2) to establish
which standardised language measures administered at
ages 2 and 3 years reliably predict expressive and receptive
language abilities, phonological awareness abilities and
reading abilities at 5 and 7 years of age.
All children were recruited as infants, and there was no
difference in socioeconomic status between the groups.
All participants were assessed on a range of receptive and
expressive language measures at ages 2, 3, 5 and 7 years;
on phonological awareness measures at age 5 and 7 and on
reading measures at age 7. A measure of general cognitive
ability was also administered at ages 3, 5 and 7.
At ages 2 and 3, there were significant differences
between the two groups of children on all language
measures with the children in the FH+ group performing
below the control group of children with no family history. At
age 5, however, only receptive language and rhyming scores
revealed significant group differences. At age 7, scores
on the Token Test, rhyming and non-word reading differed
significantly between the two groups. There was much
variability in performance on language measures in the FH+
group, perhaps due to the fact that the group was selected
purely on presence of a family history of LLI, prior to the age
when language begins to emerge.
At 3 years of age receptive language score significantly
predicted 24% of variance of language score and 55%
of variance on the Token Test at age 5. A similar pattern
of prediction was found for 7-year-old language (11% of
receptive language variance) and reading abilities (25% of
reading comprehension variance; 21% of non-word reading
Reading growth in children with language
impairment.
Catts, H. W., Bridges, M. S., Little, T. D., & Tomblin, J. B.
(2008). Reading achievement growth in children with
language impairments. Journal of Speech Language and
Hearing Research, 51, 1569–1579.
Erica Dixon
This paper describes a longitudinal study of 225 children
with language impairment (LI) and 379 children with typical
language skills (TL). These children were indentified in
kindergarten, based on results of the Test of Language
Development-2 Primary edition (TOLD-2P), a narrative story
task and two subtests of the Wechsler Pre-School and
Primary Scale of Intelligence – Revised (WPPSI-R). All
children were re-assessed on measures of reading
comprehension and word recognition in 2nd, 4th, 8th and
10th grades. The aim of the study was to establish the
pattern of growth in reading achievement of children with LI
across the school years. Specifically, they aimed to
determine if children with LI would show deviant, delayed but
parallel, or perhaps an increasingly delayed pattern of
reading achievement compared to their peers with TL.
Results showed high initial acceleration in areas of word
recognition and reading comprehension for both groups
of children, with slower growth between 4th and 8th/10th
grades. Interestingly, no significant differences were
observed in the shape of growth trajectories between the
two groups. Although children with LI showed lower initial
reading abilities and failed to catch up with the TL cohort
during the span of the study, differences in reading ability
between the groups did not increase across the grades. As
a result, children with LI were found to reach much lower
levels of reading achievement in middle and high school than
children with TL. When investigating the effects of non-
verbal cognitive ability on reading achievement, it was found
that children with low non-verbal cognitive abilities (from
both LI and TL groups) demonstrated lower initial reading
achievement than those with normal non-verbal cognitive
abilities. However, there were no differences between the
two groups of children in the growth of reading achievement
across the school grades.
Results from the 10th grade assessments showed that
children with LI performed at a grade-equivalent level of
approximately 6th grade in reading comprehension and
close to 5th grade in word recognition. However, children
with TL were at grade level in reading comprehension but
were found to be below grade level in word recognition
(approximately 7th to 8th grade-level).
Given the strong empirical evidence that oral language
is the foundation for reading achievement, what do the
results of this study mean for clinicians? First, the presence
of LI in kindergarten is an important predictor of persistent
reading disorder across the school grades. Second, effective
screening and referral procedures need to be in place to
identify and support children with LI at the beginning of
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