Epilogue: language abilities in persons with dyslexia

Language difficulties are common among individuals with dyslexia and warrant greater consideration across research, advocacy, and clinical practice. For almost a hundred years, language difficulties have been observed in individuals with dyslexia (e.g., Orton, 1928). However, in approximately half of all individuals with dyslexia, language difficulties meet the clinical criteria for developmental language disorder (DLD), an impairment in the comprehension and use of oral language (Bishop et al., 2017; Catts et al., 2003, 2005; Ramus et al., 2013). Even when language difficulties in dyslexia do not meet the clinical threshold for DLD, many subclinical language difficulties persist beyond the point of word-reading remediation (Gallagher et al., 1996). In light of these patterns, this epilogue synthesizes contributions from the special issue on language abilities in persons with dyslexia and identifies four priority areas for the field. First, research design should systematically measure and account for language comorbidity. Secondly, legislative screening policy should be expanded to include broader language comprehension measures alongside current predictors of word reading. Third, special education evaluation practices should incorporate cognitive-linguistic markers, such as nonword and sentence repetition, to differentiate dyslexia from DLD in comorbid presentations. Finally, word-reading intervention research should address the semantic and morpho-syntactic dimensions of language, in addition to phonological and orthographic instruction, to improve automatic word reading. Taken together, these priorities support a more complete account of dyslexia, one that reflects the full range of language profiles and accounts for comorbidity in this population, and is in line with the new definition of dyslexia (IDA, 2025).