title: Pre-literacy skills of subgroups of children with speech sound disorders.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The existing literature has conflicting findings about the literacy outcome of children with speech sound disorders (SSD), which may be due to the heterogeneity within SSD. Previous studies have documented that two important dimensions of heterogeneity are the presence of a comorbid language impairment (LI) and the persistence of SSD, but these factors have not been examined separately.
  
  
  METHODS
  The current study used a 2 x 2 MANOVA design (with follow-up MANCOVAs) to examine how a comorbid language impairment (LI) and the persistence of SSD relate to pre-literacy skills in a sample of 5- to 6-year-old children with SSD.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Significant main effects for persistent SSD and LI were obtained, such that each factor was associated with worse performance on pre-literacy tasks, particularly those assessing phonological awareness (even with nonverbal IQ covaried). In addition, even SSD children with normalized speech without LI were found to have deficits on phonological awareness tasks relative to control participants.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These results suggest that a history of SSD and comorbid LI are strong correlates of pre-literacy deficits.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Denver, Denver, CO 80208, USA. nraitano@du.edu
authors.forename: Nancy A
authors.initials: NA
authors.lastname: Raitano
authors.forename: Bruce F
authors.initials: BF
authors.lastname: Pennington
authors.forename: Rachel A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Tunick
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Boada
authors.forename: Lawrence D
authors.initials: LD
authors.lastname: Shriberg
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D015897:Comorbidity; D004410:Dyslexia / Q000209:etiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007806:Language Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D008297:Male; D010700:Phonetics; D012307:Risk Factors; D013064:Speech Disorders / Q000150:complications* / Q000523:psychology*