ACQ Vol 11 no 2 2009

Literacy

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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. 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 Predicting later language and early reading outcomes in at-risk children.

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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ACQ Volume 11, Number 2 2009

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