Phonological impairment in dyslexic children with and without early speech-language disorder

This study examines phonological awareness in a group of 10 dyslexic children, compared with two groups of children (a reading-equivalent control group and a group of beginning readers). Five of the dyslexic children exhibited an early speech-language impairement, and five others were not language-impaired. The experimental design consisted of a set of 10 tasks involving sensitivity to phonological strings, phonetic identification, and phoneme segmentation and manipulation. The major findings reveal that (a) the two subgroups of dyslexic children exhibit a metalinguistic impairment and (b) dyslexic children with speech-language impairment exhibit (besides metalinguistic impairment) a deficit concerning early precursors of the phonological awareness (rhyme and syllables). These findings provide additional support for including speech-language impairment as an operational criterion within the heterogeneous group of dyslexic children.