Basic reading skills in Swedish children with late developing language and with or without autism spectrum disorder or ADHD

Abstract

Reading skills at age 7–8 years were examined in a community-representative sample of 21 screened and clinically examined children with language delay (LD) followed prospectively from 2.5 years of age. The present study aimed to (1) determine whether these children with a history of LD had deficits in basic reading skills, i.e. decoding and comprehension, compared to the age norms of standardized tests, (2) analyze if there was a relationship between reading outcome and neuropsychiatric diagnosis by comparing three subgroups of children, LD pure, LD + ASD (autism spectrum disorder) and LD + ADHD, and, (3) determine what language measures at age 6 years were associated with the 7–8-year reading outcome. Both decoding and comprehension of single word reading were significantly below the norm for the whole LD group, where children with LD + ASD scored lowest, and children with LD highest. However, the differences between the three groups did not reach significance. Two reader groups were identified according to the results of word decoding and comprehension, respectively, resulting in the same 7 children. ANOVA revealed that the only differences on the 6-year language tests between the two groups were found on color naming and word memory. This study has shown that children with LD and subsequently identified neurodevelopmental problems such as ASD and ADHD experience continued deficits, demonstrated also in reading skills and that the picture of the reading problems seemed to resemble those of typically developing children.