Article published in:
Specific Language Impairment: Current trends in research
Edited by Stavroula Stavrakaki
[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 58] 2015
► pp. 35–56

Language disorders in children with Developmental Dyslexia

| University of Milano-Bicocca
| University of Venice
| University of Milano-Bicocca
| Centro di Psicomotricità Lodi
| University of Milano-Bicocca
While language skills are generally not assessed in children with Developmental Dyslexia (DD), it is known that 50% of them manifests some of the symptoms that we find in children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). This is confirmed in this study for Italian: 50% of the children with DD scores 1.5 SD below the mean of their peers with typical development in the production of relative clauses and wh-questions. Thus, some children with DD fail in those tasks in which also children with SLI fail. These findings point to the need of language assessment when children with DD are referred for reading problems.
Published online: 11 August 2015
https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.58.02gua
References

References

Arosio, F., Branchini, C., Barbieri, L. & Guasti, M.T.
2014 Failure to produce direct object clitic pronouns as a clinical marker of SLI in school-aged Italian speaking children. Clinical linguistics and Phonetics 28(9): 639–663. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Arosio, F., Vernice, M. & Guasti, M.T.
In prep. Clitic production in children with DD.
Arosio, F., Branchini, C., Forgiarini, M., Roncaglione, E., Carravieri, E., Tenca, E. & Guasti, M.T.
2010 SLI children’s weakness in morphosyntax and pragmatics. In The Proceedings of the Tenth Tokyo Conference on Psycholinguistics, Yukio Otsu (ed.), 57–75. Tokyo: Hituzi Syobo Press.Google Scholar
Barshalom, E.G., Crain, S. & Shankweiler, D.
1993 A comparison of comprehension and production abilities of good and poor readers. Applied Psycholinguistics 14: 197–227. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Belletti, A.
2001 Inversion as focalization. In Subject Inversion in Romance and the Theory of Universal Grammar, A.C.J. Hulk & J.-Y. Pollock (eds), 60–90. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Bishop, D.V.M. & Snowling, M.J.
2004 Developmental dyslexia and specific language impairment: Same or different? Psychological Bulletin 130: 858–886. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bortolini, U., Arfé, B., Caselli, C.M., Degasperi, L., Deevy, P. & Leonard, L.B.
2006 Clinical markers for specific language impairment in Italian: the contribution of clitics and non‐word repetition. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders 41: 695–712. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Conti-Ramsden, G., Botting, N. & Faragher, B.
2001 Psycholinguistic markers for Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 42: 741–748. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cantiani, C., Lorusso, M.L., Perego, P., Molteni, M. & Guasti, M.T.
2013 ERPs reveal anomalous morphosyntactic processing in developmental dyslexia. Applied Psycholinguistics 34: 1135–1162. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cardinaletti, A.
2007 Subjects and wh-questions. Some new generalizations. In Romance Linguistics 2006: Selected papers from the 36th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL) [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 287], J. Camacho, N. Flores Ferran, V. Déprez, L. Sanchez & M.J. Cabrera (eds), 57–78. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Castles, A. & Coltheart, M.
2004 Is there a causal link from phonological awareness to success in learning to read? Cognition 91: 77–111. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Catts, H.W., Adlof, S.M., Hogan, T.P. & Weismer, S.E.
2005 Are specific language impairment and dyslexia distinct disorders? Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 48: 1378–1396. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Claessen, M., Leitão, S., Kane, R. & Williams, C.
2013 Phonological processing skills in specific language impairment. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 15: 471–483. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Contemori, C. & Garaffa, M.
2010 Comparison of modalities in SLI syntax: A study on the comprehension and production of non-canonical sentences. Lingua 120: 1940–1955. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Crain, S. & Thornton, R.
1998 Investigation in Universal Grammar. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Dunn, L.M. & Dunn, L.M.
2000 Peabody – Test di Vocabolario Recettivo – P.P.V.T.-R. Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test – Revised. Italian adaptation and standardization. Stella, G., Pizzioli, C. & Tressoldi, P. (eds). Firenze: Omega Edizioni.Google Scholar
Friedmann, N. & Novogrodsky, R.
2008 Subtypes of SLI: SySLI, PhoSLI, LeSLI, and PraSLI. In Language acquisition and development, A. Gavarró & J.M. Freitas (eds), 205–217. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press/CSP.Google Scholar
Goswami, U.
2011 A temporal sampling framework for developmental dyslexia. Trends in Cognitive Science 15: 3–10. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Guasti, M.T., Branchini, C. & Arosio, F.
2012 Interference in the production of Italian subject and object wh-questions. Applied Psycholinguistics 33: 185–223. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Guasti, M.T., Branchini, C., Arosio, F. & Vernice, M.
2012 A developmental study of subject and object relatives in Italian. Revue Roumaine de Linguistique 72: 105–116.Google Scholar
Guasti, M.T., Branchini, C., Vernice, M., Carravieri, E. & Arosio, F.
In preparation. Production of wh-questions in Italian speaking children with SLI.
Håkansson, G. & Hansson, K.
2000 Comprehension and production of relative clauses: A comparison between Swedish impaired and unimpaired children. Journal of Child Language 7: 313–333. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hamburger, H. & Crain, S.
1982 Relative acquisition. In Language Development, Vol. 1: Syntax and Semantics, S.A. Kuczaj II (ed.), 245–273. Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Ho, C.S.-H., Chan, D.W.-O., Tsang, S.-M & Lee, S.-H.
2002 The cognitive profile and multiple-deficit hypothesis in Chinese developmental dyslexia. Developmental Psychology 38(4), 543–553. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hulme, C. & Snowling, M.
1992 Deficits in output phonology: An explanation of reading failure? Cognitive Neuropsychology 9(1): 42–72. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kayne, R.S.
1994 The Antisymmetry of Syntax. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Marshall, C.R., Harcourt-Brown, S., Ramus, F. & van der Lely, H.K.J.
2009 The link between prosody and language skills in children with SLI and/or dyslexia. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders 44: 466–488. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
McArthur, G.M., Hogben, J.H., Edwards, V.T., Heath, S.M. & Mengler, E.D.
2000 On the“specifics” of specific reading disability and specific language impairment. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 41: 869–874. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Messaoud-Galusi, S. & Marshall, C.R.
2010 Introduction to this special issue. The overlap between SLI and dyslexia: The role of phonology. Scientific Studies of Reading 14: 1–7. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ramus, F., Marshall, C.R., Rosen, S. & van der Lely, H.K.J.
2013 Phonological deficits in specific language impairment and developmental dyslexia: Towards a multidimensional model. Brain 136: 630–645. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ramus, F. & Ahissar, M.
2012 Developmental dyslexia: The difficulties of interpreting poor performance, and the importance of normal performance. Cognitive Neuropsychology 29: 104–122. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Raven, J., Court, J.H. & Raven, J.C.
1998 Raven Manual, Section 1 (General overview) and Section 2 (Coloured Progressive Matrices). Oxford: Oxford Psychologist Press.Google Scholar
Rispens, J.E., Been, P.H. & Zwarts, F.
2006 Brain responses to subject–verb agreement violations in spoken language in developmental dyslexia: An ERP study. Dyslexia 12: 134–149. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Robertson, E.K. & Joanisse, M.F.
2010 Spoken sentence comprehension in children with dyslexia and language impairment: The role of syntax and working memory. Applied Psycholinguistics 31: 141–165. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Stavrakaki, S.
2002 A-bar movement constructions in Greek children with SLI: Evidence for deficits in the syntactic component of language. In Clinical Linguistics: Theory and applications in speech pathology and therapy. Current Issues in Linguistic Theory [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 227] E. Fava (ed.), 31–153. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Tomblin, J.B., Records, N.L., Buckwalter, P., Zhang, X., Smith, E. & O’Brien, M.
1997 Prevalence of specific language impairment in kindergarten children. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 40: 1245–60. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Van der Leij, A. & Van Daal, V.
1999 Automatization aspects of dyslexia: Speed limitations in word identification, sensitivity to increasing task demands, and orthographic compensation. Journal of Learning Disabilities 32(5): 417–428. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Van der Lely, H.K.J. & Battell, J.
2003 Wh-movement in children with grammatical SLI: A test of the RDDR Hypothesis. Language 79: 153–181. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Vernice, M., Arosio, F., Barbieri, L. Carravieri, E., Roncaglione, E., van der Lely, H. & Guasti, M.T.
2013 CLAD-ITA GAPS: Un test di screening delle abilità fonologiche e morfo-sintattiche in bambini con un Disturbo Specifico del Linguaggio (CLAD-ITA GAPS: a screening test of phonological and morphosyntactic abilities in children with Specific Language Impairment). Giornale Italiano di Psicologia Clinica 17: 291–313.Google Scholar
Vellutino, F.R.
1979 Dyslexia, Theory and Research. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Waltzman, D.E. & Cairns, H.S.
2000 Grammatical knowledge of third grade good and poor readers. Applied Psycholinguistics 21: 263–284. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Wiseheart, R., Altmann, L.J.P., Park, H. & Lombardino, L.J.
2009 Sentence comprehension in young adults with developmental dyslexia. Annals of Dyslexia 59: 151–167. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Zachou, A., Partesana, E., Tenca, E. & Guasti, M.T.
2013 Production and comprehension of direct object clitics and definite articles by Italian children with developmental dyslexia. In Advances in Language Acquisition, S. Stavrakaki, M. Lalioti & P. Kostantinopoulou (eds), 464–471. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 12 other publications

No author info given
2015.  In The Acquisition of Italian [Language Acquisition and Language Disorders, 57], Crossref logo
Arosio, Fabrizio & Maria Teresa Guasti
2019. The production of wh-questions in Italian-speaking children with SLI. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics 33:4 ► pp. 349 ff. Crossref logo
Cantiani, Chiara, Maria Luisa Lorusso, Maria Teresa Guasti, Beate Sabisch & Claudia Männel
2013. Characterizing the morphosyntactic processing deficit and its relationship to phonology in developmental dyslexia. Neuropsychologia 51:8 ► pp. 1595 ff. Crossref logo
Cantiani, Chiara, Maria Luisa Lorusso, Paolo Perego, Massimo Molteni & Maria Teresa Guasti
2015. Developmental Dyslexia With and Without Language Impairment: ERPs Reveal Qualitative Differences in Morphosyntactic Processing. Developmental Neuropsychology 40:5 ► pp. 291 ff. Crossref logo
Delage, Hélène & Stephanie Durrleman
2018. Developmental dyslexia and specific language impairment: distinct syntactic profiles?. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics 32:8 ► pp. 758 ff. Crossref logo
D’Ortenzio, Silvia & Francesca Volpato
2020. How do Italian-speaking children handle wh-questions? A comparison between children with hearing loss and children with normal hearing. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics 34:4 ► pp. 407 ff. Crossref logo
D’Ortenzio, Silvia & Francesca Volpato
2021.  In L1 Acquisition and L2 Learning [Language Acquisition and Language Disorders, 65], ► pp. 134 ff. Crossref logo
Guasti, Maria Teresa, Hélène Delage & Stephanie Durrleman
2018.  In On the Acquisition of the Syntax of Romance [Language Acquisition and Language Disorders, 62], ► pp. 147 ff. Crossref logo
Marotta, Giovanna
2018.  In Structuring Variation in Romance Linguistics and Beyond [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 252], ► pp. 365 ff. Crossref logo
Stanford, Emily & Hélène Delage
2020. Complex syntax and working memory in children with specific learning difficulties. First Language 40:4 ► pp. 411 ff. Crossref logo
Tagliani, Marta, Maria Vender & Chiara Melloni
2021. Object relatives with postverbal subject in Italian-speaking children and adults: The role of encyclopedic knowledge in detecting sentence ambiguity. Language Acquisition 28:4 ► pp. 387 ff. Crossref logo
Talli, Ioanna, Liliane Sprenger-Charolles & Stavroula Stavrakaki
2015.  In Specific Language Impairment [Language Acquisition and Language Disorders, 58], ► pp. 57 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 21 november 2021. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.