Children with reading disabilities have an increased risk for academic difficulties and negative social consequences. Recently, researchers have begun to investigate reading comprehension problems that occur in spite of good word reading skills. Children who fit this profile are often referred to as """"""""poor comprehenders,"""""""" and they comprise 5-10% of school-aged children. Studies of poor comprehenders show that they exhibit deficits in oral language that are in some ways similar to children with specific language impairment (SLI), but the two populations have thus far been considered separately. One reason for this is that SLI is typically identified in 4-5 year old children, whereas poor comprehenders are not usually identified until third or fourth grade. Most studies of poor comprehenders have focused on deficits in the domains of semantics and text-level language. Although poor comprehenders also show syntactic deficits, as measured by coarse-grained tests from standardized language assessments, few studies have closely examined knowledge of specific syntactic structures. The proposed study will address this gap in the literature by examining one aspect of syntax, specifically morpho-syntax, in poor comprehenders. Morphosyntactic deficits are a hallmark of children with SLI; thus, the results of this study will be particularly useful for comparing poor comprehenders to children with SLI. Also, because morpho-syntactic difficulties can be identified much earlier than reading comprehension problems, this study has the potential to inform early identification programs. In this study, fourth grade poor comprehenders with and without SLI and typically developing controls matched for school grade and word reading ability will complete three tasks examining morpho-syntactic skills. In addition, they will complete a comprehensive language test, and receptive vocabulary and phonological processing tests to assess their skills in other language domains and reference this study to previous studies. Specific questions are (1) Do poor comprehenders with and without SLI show significant difficulties with morpho-syntax compared to typical readers matched for school grade and word reading ability? (2) Do poor comprehenders display the general language deficits associated with SLI? (3) Do poor comprehenders meeting the criteria for SLI differ in their performance on morpho-syntactic tasks from poor comprehenders who do not meet SLI criteria and from typical readers matched for word reading ability? This research will benefit public health by increasing the specification of the linguistic profile of poor comprehenders, describing their areas of deficit, identifying treatment targets, and improving efforts toward the early identification of children at risk for later reading comprehension problems. ? ? ?
| Adlof, Suzanne M; Catts, Hugh W (2015) Morphosyntax in Poor Comprehenders. Read Writ 28:1051-1070 |
| Adlof, Suzanne M; Catts, Hugh W; Lee, Jaehoon (2010) Kindergarten predictors of second versus eighth grade reading comprehension impairments. J Learn Disabil 43:332-45 |
