Phonogram and word decoding patterns in children with developmental language disorders: Evidence for protracted periods of graphophonemic decoding

Abstract

PurposeChildren with developmental language disorder (DLD) appear to be challenged with word reading problems in a number of ways, yet few investigations in this area are known. Of interest in this exploratory study was how children with DLD decode and recognize words and word parts (phonograms) with irregular (opaque) graphemic properties. MethodSixty children with DLD and typical language (TLD) in 2nd–5th grade, and 19 college-aged adults, were asked to decode individual phonograms, words and pseudowords, and to identify phonogram forms in a recognition task. Responses were categorized as either reflecting graphophonemic (i.e., a letter-to-sound serial decoding pattern), or target (i.e., irregular graphemic spellings typical of English), or unrelated or incorrect responses (i.e., no apparent adherence to grapheme-phoneme correspondences, or conventional English orthography). ResultsAccording to logistic regression analyses, children with DLD at each grade level used higher levels of serial, letter-sound correspondences in their decoded productions of isolated phonograms, real and pseudowords relative to their grade-matched peers with TLD and to adults. DLD2 and TLD1 groups performed similarly across the three production tasks. Results on the phonogram recognition task reflected mixed patterns of responding across child and adult groups. Overall DLD participants made more LS only selections than did TLD participants, although DLD and TLD 4th–5th graders performed similarly to each other in their relative selections of target versus target + LS phonogram forms. ConclusionsChildren with DLD appear to demonstrate protracted stages of graphophonemic serial decoding. A gradual catching-up trend seems to occur over 2nd–5th grades on certain aspects of decoding. A number of developmental considerations and clinical implications for children with DLD are drawn from this study.