During our initial funding period, we examined the reading and writing outcomes in 2nd and 4th grades of a large group of children with and without language impairments in kindergarten. Our results showed a strong relationship between early language abilities (phonological as well as other language skills) and reading/writing achievement. In the proposed project, we will continue, and expand, our investigation of the association between spoken and written language project, we will continue, and expand, our investigation of the association between spoken and written language development. Specifically, we will examine this relationship from three perspectives. First, we will investigate the reading and writing outcomes in 8th and 10th grades of children identified in our original project as having language impairments. These data will be combined with earlier results in growth curve analyses of the reading development of children with and without early language impairments. These data will be combined with earlier results in growth curve analyses of the reading development of children with and without early language impairments. Second, we will investigate the language and processing capacity limitations of children identified as poor readers in 8th/10th grades. In this analysis, we will make use of data from our earlier investigation as well as data collected in the proposed project. Third, we will treat reading and language abilities as continuous variables and examine the developmental relationship between these abilities. Because we will have data on language abilities from kindergarten through 10th grade and reading achievement from 2nd through 10th grade, we will have the unique opportunity to study the language-reading relationship across much of its developmental period. This investigation is strengthened considerably by the fact that we have a wide range of language measures- not only phonological processing, but oral language and language processing measures, and multiple measures of reading achievement including measures of word recognition, reading rate, and comprehension.
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