ACQ Vol 11 no 2 2009

reading are essential steps in any intervention, many clients report ongoing difficulties at the level of connected text. Text composition is a very complex undertaking relying on skill in grammar and narrative as well as word retrieval and spelling (in the written modality). In a first series of research studies, we investigated the writing skills of a group of adults with a history of childhood oral language impairment (LI). The story writing of 10 adults with a history of LI was compared to a group of 51 unimpaired individuals. Participants were asked to write and tell the story of Cinderella. Stories were analysed for length, grammatical complexity and accuracy of grammar, punctuation and spelling, generic structure and cohesion. The results indicated that, as a group, the adults with LI showed no difference from the comparison group in the length of their stories as measured by total number of words. The LI group did, however, show reduced grammatical complexity in their writing, as measured by mean length of t-unit. The LI group made more errors in grammar, spelling and punctuation than the comparison group. In contrast, patterns of text organisation at the level of generic structure and measures of cohesion did not distinguish the performance of the LI group from the comparison group. When the written stories were compared to the oral stories, both groups produced significantly longer oral stories than written, but showed no significant difference in complexity (mean length of t-unit) between the two modalities. The oral and written stories of adults with a history of LI were less grammatically complex and more error filled than those of comparison group. Thus, the writing of the adults with a history of LI reflected their oral language skill. We are continuing to analyse these data, looking at the text cohesion and generic structure of the oral texts to determine if these measures are a relative strength for the LI group in oral stories as they are in the written stories. References Brunsdon, R. K., Coltheart, M., & Nickels, L. (2005). Treatment of irregular word spelling in developmental surface dysgraphia. Cognitive Neuropsychology , 22 , 213–251. Di Betta, A. M., & Romani, C. (2006). Lexical learning and dysgraphia in a group of adults with developmental dyslexia. Cognitive Neuropsychology , 23 (3), 376–400. Kohnen, S., Nickels, L.,. Brunsdon, R., & Coltheart, M (2008). Predicting generalisation in the training of irregular word spelling: Treating lexical spelling deficits in a child. Cognitive Neuropsychology , 25 , 343–375. Kohnen, S., Nickels, L., & Castles, A. (2009). Assessing spelling skills and strategies: A critique of available resources. Australian Journal of Learning Difficulties , 14 , 113–150. Mortensen, L., Smith-Lock, K.M., & Nickels, L. (In press). Text structure and patterns of cohesion in narrative texts written by adults with a history of lan- guage impairment. Reading and Writing . Smith-Lock, K.M., Mortensen, L., & Nickels, L. (In press). Story writing skills of adults with a history language- impairment. Reading and Writing .

learning is measured by how well these new words can be read and/or spelled after exposure to the story. Results from one of our single case studies shows that while training can improve knowledge of spelling rules and spelling of real words (even untrained ones), skill generalisation may not necessarily extend to orthographic learning for the acquisition of new words. Our findings support previous research that reports orthographic learning deficits in adults with developmental dyslexia/dysgraphia, indicating that orthographic learning might remain impaired into adulthood. Further case studies are currently underway to investigate this issue in greater detail. Evaluating treatment programs for literacy impairments The discipline of cognitive neuropsychology has made important contributions to the conceptualisation of therapy for language impairments. The cognitive neuropsychological approach involves detailed assessment based on models of language processing (e.g., dual route theory of reading for a reading assessment) followed by individualised treatment programs tailored to the language impairment identified by the assessment. While individually tailored remediation programs are a promising avenue for successful intervention of language disorders, they are also resource- and cost-intensive. There are, however, programs (e.g., for the treatment of literacy disorders in children) that are designed in such a way that they most likely lead to improvement in the majority of children with literacy disorders. Some of these programs are widely used. The potential difficulty with such programs is that developmental disorders of reading and spelling are very heterogeneous: children present with very different problems underlying their reading/spelling impairment (often, but not always, leading to different symptoms). For example, most people with reading/spelling difficulties have problems with the rule-based knowledge (“phonics”, investigated by reading/ spelling non-words). However, at the same time, most people with reading/spelling difficulties also find it difficult to read and spell words that are not predictable from their writing (i.e., irregular words like yacht , friend ). But, crucially, not all people present with difficulties in both of these areas, some only have difficulties with rule-based knowledge and others only with irregular words. Almost every person is different in the extent to which their rule-based or irregular word knowledge has developed. The cognitive neuropsychological approach would argue that these different impairments require different forms of intervention. Can the “one size fits all” approach of the programs cater to these different needs? Many of the widely used programs lack formal evaluation, and hence, we cannot be sure how much these programs improve reading and spelling. In particular, it is not clear how and if children with different subtypes of reading and spelling disorders benefit to the same degree (or benefit at all) from such programs. We are currently using cognitive neuropsychological methods in order to independently evaluate different treatment programs for reading/spelling problems. This research should allow clinicians to make more specific predictions as to which children may or may

Correspondence to: Associate Professor Lyndsey Nickels NHMRC Senior Research Fellow Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science (MACCS) Macquarie University, NSW 2109 phone: 02 9850 8448 fax: 02 9850 6059 email: lyndsey.nickels@mq.edu.au

not benefit from receiving a particular program. Effects of specific language impairment on writing skills

Much of the published research on intervention with people with reading and spelling/writing difficulties focuses on the acquisition of single words. While single word spelling and

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ACQ Volume 11, Number 2 2009

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