Written language as a window into residual language deficits: a study of children with persistent and residual speech and language impairments.
Previous work has suggested that, because writing is a late-acquired and complex skill, it may be a particularly sensitive index of language difficulties in children. Evidence in support of this view was obtained in a study contrasting 161 normally-developing control children aged from 7.5 to 13 years with 75 twin children of the same age who either had specific speech-language impairments, or were co-twins of affected children. Written narratives were elicited from children using a sequence of five photographs depicting a simple story, and were analysed for grammatical complexity and accuracy, intelligibility, and semantic content. Only 42 of the twins could spell well enough to attempt the narrative task. Some co-twins of affected children had deficits in written language, despite normal performance on oral language tests. Most children with language impairments were poor at writing, with particularly marked deficits on a measure of spelling and punctuation. Children with language impairments made a relatively high proportion of phonologically inaccurate spelling errors when compared with younger children at a similar vocabulary level. Those who did poorly on a nonword repetition test were especially likely to have poor written language. However, four children with pure speech difficulties produced age-appropriate written narratives.
Bishop
Dorothy V M
DV
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, UK. dorothy.bishop@psy.ox.ac.uk
Clarkson
Barbara
B
D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology; D002648:Child; D004410:Dyslexia / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000523:psychology; D007806:Language Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology*; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D013064:Speech Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology*; D018433:Twin Studies as Topic; D014956:Writing