Spelling well despite developmental language disorder: what makes it possible?

Area of Science:

• Developmental Psychology
• Linguistics
• Educational Psychology

Background:

• Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) and developmental dyslexia (spelling difficulties, SD) often co-occur.
• Understanding the specific cognitive profiles differentiating these conditions is crucial for targeted interventions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the overlap between DLD and SD in Russian-speaking children.
• To examine the roles of phoneme awareness (PA), rapid automatized naming (RAN), pseudoword repetition (PWR), morphological awareness (MA), and orthographic awareness (OA) in differentiating DLD with SD from DLD without SD.

Main Methods:

• A study involving 149 Russian-speaking children aged 10.40–14.00 years.
• Comparison of four groups: typically developing children, children with SD only, children with DLD only, and children with both DLD and SD.
• Assessment of PA, RAN (Letters, Objects, Digits, Colors), PWR, MA, and OA.

Main Results:

• The SD, DLD, and DLD/SD groups showed similar deficits in PA and RAN Letters compared to controls.
• Children with written deficits (SD and DLD/SD) underperformed in RAN Objects/Digits, PWR, OA, and MA.
• Children with DLD but no SD performed similarly to controls on these measures, except for RAN Colors where they underperformed.

Conclusions:

• Children with DLD and unimpaired pseudoword repetition and rapid automatized naming skills can achieve literacy comparable to peers with typical language development.
• Findings support a multifactorial model of DLD, highlighting the interplay of spoken and written language skills.