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Early language development and precursors of dyslexia: (d) morphosyntax in spontaneous and elicited production

Carien Wilsenach, Petra van Alphen, Elise de Bree, Ellen Gerrits, Jan de Jong and Frank Wijnen

Utrecht University, Netherlands Carien.Wilsenach@let.uu.nl

Abstract

In this symposium we will present results from the longitudinal research programme Early language development in SLI and dyslexia: A prospective and comparative study. Previous retrospective studies suggests that dyslexia and Specific Language Impairment (SLI) exist on a continuum of language disorders, with the language difficulties "more exposed" in SLI and "hidden" in dyslexia. Minding this hypothesis, an approach that is viable but has not been adopted in full is to study early language development of children with a genetic risk for dyslexia and children with SLI in a prospective and comparative design. The aim of the current project is to identify linguistic precursors of dyslexia, with the ultimate goal of identifying dyslexic children (in future) before they start learning to read. Every six months, data was collected from 120 at-risk children and 80 controls (18-54 months), and from 30 children with SLI (36-60 months). Every test session consisted of experiments focusing on morphosyntactic skills, speech perception, and phonology. In addition, standard language-, intelligence- and memory tests were conducted. The symposium will consist of four presentations, focusing on (a) speech perception and word recognition, (b) phonological development, (c) early perceptual sensitivity to morphosyntactic patterns, and (d) morphosyntax in spontaneous and elicited production (see individual abstracts). For part (a), Speech perception and word recognition, we have found that the categorical perception of the consonants /p/ and /k/ in at-risk children around age 4, just as in children with SLI, is significantly less well developed than in the control group. Furthermore, the at-risk children and children with SLI are less able to detect small mispronunciations in words. In conclusion, the results indicate that speech and language development in the at-risk children lags behind that of the age-matched controls. A subset of the at-risk children has a language profile very similar to that of the SLI children, supporting the hypothesis that dyslexia and SLI are related disorders. Furthermore, there are clear indications that problems in speech- and language perception and comprehension predict developmental delays in production.

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