Phonological processing and decoding abilities in early elementary school-aged children with speech sound disorders...

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Developmental Psychology
• Education

Background:

• Phonological processing and decoding are crucial for literacy.
• Children with speech sound disorders (SSD) often face challenges in phonological skills, impacting decoding.
• Developmental dyslexia (DD) can co-occur with SSD, leading to varied outcomes.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate distinct phonological processing and decoding profiles in children with SSD only, SSD with DD (SSD+DD), and DD.
• To understand the impact of comorbid SSD and DD on literacy-related skills.

Main Methods:

• Forty-seven Korean children were assessed using standardized measures.
• Evaluated phonological awareness, phonological memory, rapid automatized naming, and decoding abilities.
• Included real and nonword decoding, and consistent/inconsistent phoneme-grapheme correspondence tasks.

Main Results:

• The SSD+DD group exhibited significantly lower performance across phonological awareness, memory, and retrieval compared to other groups.
• SSD+DD demonstrated reduced decoding accuracy and lacked a real-word advantage.
• All groups performed better on consistent phoneme-grapheme items, but SSD+DD remained significantly weaker.

Conclusions:

• Comorbid SSD+DD is linked to widespread phonological deficits and severe decoding impairments.
• These deficits distinguish SSD+DD from SSD alone or DD alone.
• Findings emphasize the interconnectedness of phonological and decoding skills, advocating for integrated assessments.