Speech, lexical and literacy problems in children

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper explores the relationship between speech, lexical and literacy problems in children by providing a synthesis of recent research and illustrating the key findings through a case study. Research over the last 20 years has emphasised the verbal rather than visual deficits found in children with specific reading and spelling problems — dyslexia. Children with dyslexic difficulties often have associated speech and language problems. The corollary of this is that young children with speech and language disorders are at risk for later literacy difficulties. Research at the Department of Human Communication Science has been investigating this relationship between spoken and written language difficulties in children. It has identified which speech disorders are most likely to be associated with dyslexic difficulties and why. Perhaps the most important finding of our research for clinical practice is that speech and literacy problems are not separate from each other as previously thought and treated, but that both can stem from from an underlying phonological processing deficit (Snowling & Stackhouse, 1996). The locus of this deficit, however, differs between children in terms of their input, representation and output processing skills and the precise nature of the deficit influences the speech and literacy errors made. Further, the speech and literacy difficulties interact and unfold as the child develops. Sometimes, the speech problem improves and the child is discharged from speech and language therapy but the residual subtle underlying phonological processing deficits are still sufficient to result in reading and spelling problems. These mild but persisting speech disorders in children are a serious educational problem since the extent and cause of the child's specific learning difficulty can remain hidden unless tested in a particular way (Stackhouse & Wells, 1991). Investigating the difficulties encountered by children with speech and literacy problems has shown that they also have specific lexical difficulties. Our psycholinguistic framework for investigating speech difficulties (Stackhouse & Wells, 1993, in press) has recently been extended to incorporate a range of lexical tasks. Subsequent research suggests that word‐finding difficulties, often found in speech‐disordered and dyslexic children, may arise from deficits in the phonological processing system, rather than in the semantic system as has been assumed (Constable, Stackhouse & Wells, 1994). A case study of an 8‐year‐old boy with persisting speech and spelling difficulties will show a direct relationship between imprecise lexical representations and speech and spelling errors. His performance on a range of psycholinguistic tests will be compared to normal control data by z scores. Implications for his therapy and management will be presented. The therapy suggestions target phonological representations as well as speech output skills.