Abstract
PurposeWord learning difficulties have been documented in multiple studies involving children with dyslexia and developmental language disorder (DLD; see also specific language impairment). However, no previous studies have directly contrasted word learning in these two frequently co-occurring disorders. We examined word learning in second-grade students with DLD-only and dyslexia-only as compared to each other, peers with both disorders (DLD + dyslexia), and peers with typical development. We hypothesized that children with dyslexia-only and DLD-only would show differences in word learning due to differences in their core language strengths and weaknesses.MethodChildren (N = 244) were taught eight novel pseudowords paired with unfamiliar objects. The teaching script included multiple exposures to the phonological form, the pictured object, a verbal semantic description of the object, and spaced retrieval practice opportunities. Word learning was assessed immediately after instruction with tasks requiring recall or recognition of the phonological and semantic information.ResultsChildren with dyslexia-only performed significantly better on existing vocabulary measures than their peers with DLD-only. On experimental word learning measures, children in the dyslexia-only and DLD + dyslexia groups showed significantly poorer performance than typically developing children on all word learning tasks. Children with DLD-only differed significantly from the TD group on a single word learning task assessing verbal semantic recall.ConclusionsOverall, results indicated that children with dyslexia display broad word learning difficulties extending beyond the phonological domain; however, this contrasted with their relatively strong performance on measures of existing vocabulary knowledge. More research is needed to understand relations between word learning abilities and overall vocabulary knowledge and how to close vocabulary gaps for children with both disorders.Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.14832717
Highlights
We predicted that children with dyslexia would have difficulty learning phonological word forms, showing difficulties primarily with naming and listening tasks, whereas children with DLD would have difficulty with semantic aspects of word learning, showing difficulties with drawing, describing, and finding tasks
Differences between the DLD-only group and the dyslexia-only group were not statistically significant, the effect sizes were moderate and favored the DLD-only group for four out of five primary outcomes (g = 0.41–0.49); there was minimal difference between the DLD-only and dyslexia-only groups on the describing task (g = −0.04). These results suggest that the word learning difficulties of children with DLD-only were relatively mild, with the largest deficit relative to the TD group observed for the verbal semantic recall task
The primary analyses indicated that children with dyslexia exhibited significant, moderate-to-severe difficulties with multiple aspects of spoken word learning from direct instruction, whereas children with DLD-only had only mild word learning difficulties, involving the recall of verbal semantic features
Summary
The purpose of this study was to examine group differences in global measures of word learning in children with DLD-only and dyslexia-only as compared to each other, to peers with DLD + dyslexia, and to peers with TD
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