The relationship between oral language abilities and reading: The case of children with developmental language disorder

Abstract

Oral language abilities have been reported to be related to reading development. This relationship seems to be determined by orthographic systems and reading development. Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) show reading difficulties, although most studies focus on reading comprehension. The present study has two main objectives: to examine the reading performance of a group of Spanish-speaking children with DLD compared to a chronologically age-matched group of typically developing children (TD); and to study the relationship between oral language abilities and reading performance using network analysis. They were administered five standardized tests to obtain measures about oral language abilities and reading performance. Results showed that children with DLD were less accurate and slower in reading than TD children. Meanwhile, the network analyses suggest strong and stable connections between reading and oral production in the DLD group. This finding confirms the importance of language abilities for reading acquisition.

Acknowledgements

We would first like to thank the families who participated in the study, and also the association TELAsturias, Cabueñes University Hospital, Santa María del Naranco of Oviedo School and private speech therapy clinics for their help in recruiting participants. To the Library of the University of Oviedo for providing us with the necessary instruments for the evaluations.

Author contributions

Paz Suárez-Coalla: conceptualization, formal analysis, writing – original draft; and writing – review & editing, supervision. María Suárez-Romón: conceptualization, investigation, data curation, resources, writing-original draft, writing – review & editing. Verónica Martínez: conceptualization, investigation, data curation, resources, writing – original draft; writing – review & editing, supervision.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).