Measures Of Nonverbal Intelligence Research Articles

Factors associated with nonword repetition skills in 4-to 6-year-old deaf and hard-of-hearing and typically hearing children

ABSTRACT Children identified as deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) exhibit an increased risk of speech and language difficulties. Nonword repetition (NWR) is a potential tool for identifying language difficulties in children with limited experience with the target language. In this study, we explored associations between auditory, linguistic, demographic and cognitive factors and NWR performance in DHH children and their typically hearing (TH) peers. We also examined the effect of the group on NWR outcomes when different factors were statistically controlled for. Our study included 68 4- to 6-year-old children: 18 with bilateral hearing aids (BiHAs), 18 with bilateral cochlear implants (BiCIs) and 32 with TH. The participants completed the Finnish Nonword Repetition Test comprising 24 test items with varying syllable lengths. The assessment methods also included tests of phonological, lexical, language comprehension and sentence repetition skills, along with a measure of nonverbal intelligence. The results showed that none of the auditory, linguistic, demographic and cognitive factors examined in the present study were correlated with NWR performance in the BiHA group, while significant correlations between NWR skills and linguistic abilities were observed in the BiCI group. The DHH children showed extraordinary difficulties in NWR compared to their TH peers, and these group differences remained after controlling for linguistic and demographic variables. The NWR task may be a potential clinical tool for identifying DHH children at risk for poor language outcomes and in need of speech and language intervention.

Assessment of adult cognitive abilities in Greece: A differential item functioning study of the General Ability Measure for Adults (GAMA)

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the generalizability and possible adaptation for use of a non-verbal measure of intelligence developed in the United States, the General Ability Measure for Adults (GAMA; Naglieri & Bardos, 1997) in Greece. As a validity evidence the study examined the differential item function of its questions in order to explore potential item bias utilizing the disproportionate group probabilities of participants’ correctly endorsing test items. The analysis was performed using a logistic regression procedure with samples from the United States (n = 2,369) and Greece (n = 1,273). The findings indicate a small (<1%) number of items that work differentially between these two cultural groups. Implications for the development and weighting of cross-cultural intelligence assessment tests using non-verbal measures are discussed.

Identifying dyslexia in school pupils from eye movement and demographic data using artificial intelligence.

This paper represents our research results in the pursuit of the following objectives: (i) to introduce a novel multi-sources data set to tackle the shortcomings of the previous data sets, (ii) to propose a robust artificial intelligence-based solution to identify dyslexia in primary school pupils, (iii) to investigate our psycholinguistic knowledge by studying the importance of the features in identifying dyslexia by our best AI model. In order to achieve the first objective, we collected and annotated a new set of eye-movement-during-reading data. Furthermore, we collected demographic data, including the measure of non-verbal intelligence, to form our three data sources. Our data set is the largest eye-movement data set globally. Unlike the previously introduced binary-class data sets, it contains (A) three class labels and (B) reading speed. Concerning the second objective, we formulated the task of dyslexia prediction as regression and classification problems and scrutinized the performance of 12 classifications and eight regressions approaches. We exploited the Bayesian optimization method to fine-tune the hyperparameters of the models: and reported the average and the standard deviation of our evaluation metrics in a stratified ten-fold cross-validation. Our studies showed that multi-layer perceptron, random forest, gradient boosting, and k-nearest neighbor form the group having the most acceptable results. Moreover, we showed that although separately using each data source did not lead to accurate results, their combination led to a reliable solution. We also determined the importance of the features of our best classifier: our findings showed that the IQ, gender, and age are the top three important features; we also showed that fixation along the y-axis is more important than other fixation data. Dyslexia detection, eye fixation, eye movement, demographic, classification, regression, artificial intelligence.

Language Abilities are Associated with Both Verbal and Nonverbal Intelligence in Children on the Autism Spectrum

ABSTRACT Intellectual abilities factor into levels of functioning used to characterize autism. Language difficulties are highly prevalent in autism and may impact performance on measures of intellectual abilities. As such, nonverbal tests are often prioritized in classifying intelligence in those with language difficulties and autism. However, the relationship between language abilities and intellectual performance is not well characterized, and the superiority of tests with nonverbal instructions is not well established. The current study evaluates verbal and nonverbal intellectual abilities in the context of language abilities in autism and the potential benefit of tests with nonverbal instructions. Participants were 55 children and adolescents on the autism spectrum who underwent a neuropsychological evaluation as part of a study examining language functioning in autism. Correlation analyses were performed to examine relations between expressive and receptive language abilities. Language abilities (CELF−4) were significantly correlated with all measures of both verbal (WISC-IV VCI) and nonverbal intelligence scores (WISC-IV PRI and Leiter-R). There were no significant differences between nonverbal intelligence measures with verbal or nonverbal instructions. We further discuss the role of assessment of language abilities in interpreting results of intelligence testing in populations with higher prevalence of language difficulties

Impacts of cognitive flexibility on central word identification: evidence from poor comprehenders' discourse comprehension of first graders with ADHD.

Cognitive flexibility (CF) is an executive function component related to the ability to flexibly shift amongst multiple incompatible perspectives or descriptions of an object task. However, whether CF enhances the narrative discourse comprehension of students with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) during surface semantic meaning identification remains unclear. This study aimed to examine the impacts of CF on central word (CW) identification amongst primary school students with ADHD and reading comprehension difficulties (i.e. scores in the ≤ 25th percentile of discourse comprehension but with adequate decoding skills and average decoding performance score within one standard deviation). In addition, the association of CF with CW identification performance, when the CW was located in either the first or second half of sentences, was tested with and without the interference of playing music. This study recruited 104 low-CF and 103 high-CF first grade students with ADHD and reading difficulties. Participants received measures of nonverbal intelligence, working memory, Chinese receptive vocabulary, Chinese word reading, CF and a music preference questionnaire. Additionally, participants completed the entire CW identification experiment (about 7min) individually in a silent classroom located within the school campus. After controlling nonverbal intelligence, working memory, music preference, Chinese receptive vocabulary and Chinese word reading, the results showed that high-CF students had similar poetry discourse comprehension performance with low-CF students when the CWs were at the second half of a sentence. Moreover, high-CF students showed significantly better performance than low-CF students when the CWs were at the first half of the poetry sentences in both conditions with and without music, especially if the poetry sentence structure was more complicated than the typical 'subject-verb-object' sequence. All students with ADHD performed significantly worse in poetry discourse comprehension with music interference than without it. The results highlight the importance of CF in poetry discourse comprehension tasks, particularly when a poetry sentence uses a non-typical structure format. The possible effects of CF on poetry discourse comprehension are also discussed.

How we measure language skills of children at scale: A call to move beyond domain-specific tests as a proxy for language

Purpose The aim of this research note is to encourage child language researchers and clinicians to give careful consideration to the use of domain-specific tests as a proxy for language; particularly in the context of large-scale studies and for the identification of language disorder in clinical practice. Method We report on data leveraged through the prospective Raine Study cohort. Participants included 1626 children aged 10 years (n = 104 with developmental language disorder [DLD] and n = 1522 without DLD). We assessed the predictive utility of common language measures including subtests of a standardised omnibus language assessment, non-verbal intelligence, and a domain-specific receptive vocabulary test. Result Children with DLD performed within the average range on a measure of non-verbal intelligence (z = −0.86) and receptive vocabulary (z = −0.38), as well as two out of the six subtests on the omnibus language assessment (zs > −1.50). The magnitude of the predictive relationship between language assessments and the likelihood of a child meeting criteria for DLD at 10 years was assessed using a logistic regression model, which was significant: χ 2(8) = 16.91, p = 0.031. Semantic Relationships (OR = 1.13, CI = 1.04 − 1.23, p = .004), Formulated Sentences (OR = 1.07, CI = 1.01 − 1.13, p = .028), Recalling Sentences (OR = 1.20, CI = 1.15 − 1.26, p < .001), and Sentence Assembly (OR = 1.17, CI = 1.07 − 1.30, p = .001) were significant predictors of DLD. Conclusion Domain-specific language assessments, particularly those testing receptive vocabulary, may overestimate the language ability of children with DLD. Caution is urged when using such tests by clinicians and researchers, especially those measuring language skills of children at scale. Future directions for measuring the functional impact of DLD are presented.

The effect of anxiety on working memory and language abilities in elementary schoolchildren with and without Additional Health and Developmental Needs.

Although excessive childhood anxiety is recognised as a significant public health, education and socioeconomic concern, the specific effects of such anxiety on language development and working memory, particularly visual working memory, are relatively unknown. Thus, this study aimed to examine parent-reported trait anxiety, parent-reported functional language (daily communication skills) and clinical measures of non-verbal intelligence, receptive and expressive vocabulary, phonological awareness, and visual and auditory-verbal short-term and working memory in elementary schoolchildren. The final sample included 41 children categorised as Additional Health and Developmental Needs (AHDN) due to medical, neurodevelopmental or educational concerns and 41 age- and IQ-matched neurotypical (NT) children, aged 5- to 9-years. Results showed that 26% of all children in our entire sample (AHDN and NT) experienced moderate, sub-clinical anxiety (as reported by parents), and that AHDN children were 10.5 times more likely to experience high anxiety than the NT group (odds ratio). Parents of AHDN children reported lower functional language in their children than parents of NT children. Cognitive testing indicated that the AHDN group also had poorer visual and auditory-verbal working memory than the NT group. Further, High Anxiety children (drawn from both AHDN and NT groups) showed poorer parent-reported functional language skills, and lower visual and auditory-verbal working memory capacities. Our findings are amongst the first to confirm that the presence of high parent-rated trait anxiety is associated with reduced visual working memory in children, which is consistent with biological and theoretical expectations of the impact of anxiety on visually driven, goal-directed attention and working memory. Our results regarding the high prevalence of sub-clinical anxiety in both ADHD and neurotypical children highlight the need for early assessment of anxiety in all schoolchildren, especially those classified as AHDN.

Number sense: the mediating effect between nonverbal intelligence and children’s mathematical performance

The study explored the mediating effect of number sense between nonverbal intelligence and children’s mathematical performance. The sample consisted of 131 pupils in Shaoxing City of China from grades 1, 3, and 5. The students completed measures of nonverbal intelligence, number sense, basic arithmetic ability, mathematical performance, rapid automatized naming, and working memory. Results show that although all variables significantly relate with each other (all p < .01), only nonverbal intelligence, number sense, and basic arithmetic ability significantly affect children’s mathematical performance (all p < .01). According to multiple-mediation model, nonverbal intelligence significantly predicts children’s mathematical performance through number sense and basic arithmetic ability. These findings suggest that domain-specific mathematical skills play a prominent role in children’s mathematical performance in primary school, rather than domain-general cognitive functions. Educators should pay attention to develop children’s number sense in order to improve children’s mathematical ability.

A-307 Relationship Between Nonverbal Measure of Intelligence and Achievement Performance in Rural, Latinx Youth

Abstract Objective: This study examines the relationship between the Wechsler Nonverbal Scale of Ability (WNV) and achievement in rural Latinx youth. Although concurrent validity for the WNV with other intelligence measures is established, there is sparse research on its association with academic performance. Methods: Participants (n=15) were Latinx youth, ages 8 to 17 years, including nine males and six females. Participants were administered the WNV and the Woodcock-Johnson IV Tests of Achievement (WJ-IV-ACH) as part of a psychoeducational battery. The WNV minimizes cultural/linguistic factors, providing a Full Scale score and four subtests: 1) Matrices, 2) Coding, 3) Spatial Span, and 4) Picture Arrangement. The WJ-IV-ACH includes Broad Achievement and academic cluster scores. Correlations analyzed relationships between WNV and WJ-IV-ACH scores. Results: A moderate correlation was found between WNV Full Scale and Broad Achievement (r= .44). Matrices and Picture Arrangement were moderately related to Broad Achievement (r= .39, r= .39). Matrices was strongly correlated to reading fluency (r= .60), and moderately correlated to broad reading (r= .39) and math problem solving (r= .34). Coding was associated with math calculation (r= .48). Spatial Span was strongly correlated with math problem solving (r=.53) and linked to math calculation (r= .48). Picture Arrangement was moderately correlated with broad reading, reading comprehension, math problem solving, and written expression (r= .37, r= .31, r= .33, r= .30). Conclusion: Despite the small sample size, results suggest that a diversity-informed measure of intellectual ability is related to youth’s broad achievement scores. Additionally, WNV subtest scores are differentially associated with academic domains.

Syntactic awareness matters: uncovering reading comprehension difficulties in Hong Kong Chinese-English bilingual children.

This study examined whether syntactic awareness was related to reading comprehension difficulties in either first language (L1) Chinese or second language (L2) English, or both, among Hong Kong Chinese-English bilingual children. Parallel L1 and L2 metalinguistic and reading measures, including syntactic word-order, morphological awareness, phonological awareness, vocabulary, word reading, reading comprehension, and cognitive measures of nonverbal intelligence and working memory, were administered to 224 fourth-graders. Five groups of comprehenders were identified using a regression approach: (1) 12 poor in Chinese-only (PC), (2) 18 poor in English-only (PE), (3) six poor in both Chinese and English (PB), (4) 14 average in both Chinese and English (AB), and (5) seven good in both (GB). The results of multivariate analyses of covariance showed that (1) the PB group performed worse than the AB and GB groups in both L1 Chinese and L2 English syntactic awareness; (2) the PC and PE groups performed worse than the AB and GB groups in Chinese syntactic awareness; (3) the PE group had lower performance than the PC, AB, and GB groups in English syntactic awareness; and (4) no significant group difference was found in L2 morphological awareness or vocabulary across both languages. By suggesting that weakness insyntactic awareness can serve asa universal indicator for identifying poor comprehenders in either or both L1Chinese and L2English among Hong Kong Chinese-Englishbilingual children, these findings demonstrate the fundamental role of syntacticawareness in bilingual reading comprehension.

The swerve: How childhood bilingualism changed from liability to benefit.

Early research that relied on standardized assessments of intelligence reported negative effects of bilingualism for children, but a study by Peal and Lambert (1962) reported better performance by bilingual than monolingual children on verbal and nonverbal intelligence tests. This outcome led to the view that bilingualism was a positive experience. However, subsequent research abandoned intelligence tests as the assessment tool and evaluated performance on cognitive tasks, making the research after Peal and Lambert qualitatively different from that before their landmark study, creating a disconnect between the new and earlier research. These newer cognitive studies showed both positive effects of bilingualism and no differences between language groups. But why were Peal and Lambert's results so different from previous studies that were also based on intelligence tests? The present study analyzed data from verbal and nonverbal intelligence tests that were collected from 6,077 participants across 79 studies in which intelligence tests were administered as background measures to various cognitive tasks. By including adults, the study extends the results across the life span. On standardized verbal tests, monolinguals outperformed bilinguals, but on nonverbal measures of intelligence, there were no differences between language groups. These results, which are different from those reported by Peal and Lambert, are used to reinterpret their findings in terms of the sociolinguistic, political, and cultural context in which the Peal and Lambert study was conducted and the relevance of those factors for all developmental research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Children's divergent thinking and bilingualism

Most children in the world grow up bilingual, and bilingualism has been linked to a range of linguistic and other cognitive skills. One such skill is creativity, which is thought could be increased in bilinguals due to enhanced executive functions or more diverse cultural experiences. However, extant literature with children has produced mixed results, perhaps due to methodological limitations. In this study, bilingual and monolingual children (N = 111, 60% bilingual) sampled from the same British schools completed three measures of divergent thinking, alongside measures of nonverbal intelligence, vocabulary, and exposure to English. No differences were found between monolingual and bilingual children across any of the divergent thinking tasks or measures, either before or after controlling for possible confounds, and effect sizes were negligible to small. This well-powered, pre-registered study provides no evidence for a bilingual advantage in the divergent thinking component of creativity amongst children, suggesting that previous mixed results may have been due to a high prevalence of false positives. Thus, while bilingualism has many benefits for children, divergent thinking is not one of them.

Children’s Knowledge of Multiple Word Meanings: Which Factors Count and For Whom?

Abstract Most common words in English have multiple different meanings, but relatively little is known about why children grasp some meanings better than others. This study aimed to examine how variables at the child-level, wordform-level, and meaning-level impact knowledge of words with multiple meanings. In this study, 174 children aged 5- to 9-years-old completed a test of homonym knowledge, and measures of non-verbal intelligence and language background were collected. Psycholinguistic features of the wordforms tested were assessed through collecting adult ratings, corpus coding, and using existing databases. Logistic mixed effects models revealed that whilst the frequency of wordforms contributed to children’s knowledge, so also did dominance and imageability of the separate meanings of the word. Predictors were similar for children with English as an Additional Language and English as a first language. This greater understanding of why some word meanings are known better than others has significant implications for vocabulary learning.

An Examination of the Convergent Validity of the ICAR16 and WAIS-IV

The construct validity of the International Cognitive Ability Resource (ICAR) has yet to be investigated using a gold-standard individually administered intelligence battery. The present study used a convenience sample of 97 students to examine the respective relations between the ICAR16 and overall intelligence ( g) and the Cattell–Horn–Carroll broad abilities measured by the WAIS-IV. Large correlations were observed between the observed overall scores (rICAR16, full-scale IQ = .81, p &lt; .001) and the CFA-estimated general factors ( r = .94, p &lt; .001). Evidence from confirmatory factor models suggests that the ICAR letter–number Series task measures fluid reasoning, while the matrix reasoning, verbal reasoning, and three-dimensional reasoning tasks measure visual–spatial reasoning (Gv). Findings support the ICAR16 as a valid brief measure of nonverbal intelligence; however, replications in larger samples are needed.

Narrative language skills of maltreated children living in out-of-home care

Purpose: Children’s narrative accounts of their experiences are central to the prosecution of perpetrators of alleged maltreatment. We describe the narrative language skills of children who were placed in out-of-home care (OOHC) following substantiated maltreatment. It was hypothesised that (i) children with such histories would display narrative language skills that fall significantly below published age-expected norms, (ii) narrative language skills and core language skills would be positively correlated and (iii) narrative language skills would be associated with measures of socio-economic disadvantage.Method: Eighty-three children (40 males and 43 females) aged 5;3 to 12;10 (M = 7.9, SD = 2.3) from English-speaking home backgrounds were assessed using the Test of Narrative Language and the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals (CELF-4) Core Language Score. The Raven’s Coloured Progressive Matrices, a measure of nonverbal intelligence, was employed as a covariate.Result: Forty-two percent of children scored in the below-average range on the Narrative Language Index Ability Index. The same proportion scored at/above age-expected levels on the Narrative Comprehension subtest, and 19% scored at/above age-expected levels on Oral Narration. There was a significant correlation between CELF-4 Core Language Scores and the Narrative Language Index Ability Index. Female carers’ education was significantly positively associated with overall narrative language scores; however, household income and index of socio-economic disadvantage were not significantly associated with narrative language scores.Conclusion: Children who are victims of substantiated maltreatment should be considered at-risk for compromised ability to provide a narrative account of their experiences. The heterogeneity and often scant oral narrative language skills of these children highlights the importance of police/human services training on best-practice forensic interviewing. Policy and practice implications for speech-language pathology early intervention to support the needs of at-risk children are also discussed.

Prenatal exposure to non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and neurodevelopmental outcomes in children.

Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are commonly used during pregnancy. Findings that prenatal NSAID exposure may affect offspring neurodevelopment have been inconsistent. We investigated the effect of prenatal NSAID exposure on childhood neurodevelopment and explored the susceptibility of our effect estimates to forms of bias via negative exposure, negative outcome, and multi-informant analyses. In a cohort of pregnant women (n=6876), perinatal NSAID use was assessed by prescriptions and self-report. Primary neurodevelopmental outcomes included attention problems using maternal reports at 1½, 3, and 5years. To explore potential systematic biases, we compared estimates from maternally reported attention problems to a teacher's report and a measure of nonverbal intelligence assessed at a clinic visit at age 6years; we also used NSAID use before pregnancy and somatic problems as a "negative" exposure and outcome, respectively. Maternal reports suggested that prenatal exposure to NSAIDs was associated with more attention problems at younger ages (eg, at age 3: mean difference in attention problems score: 0.30; 95% CI 0.12, 0.48). However, no strong association with attention problems was found in the teacher report, and a similarly strong association between prenatal NSAID exposure and somatic complaints suggests residual confounding by indication likely remains. Moreover, prenatal exposure to NSAIDs was not associated with an observed measure of IQ (mean difference in IQ score: -0.32; 95% CI: -1.82, 1.19). Jointly, our results suggest that the observed associations between prenatal exposure to NSAIDs and child attention problems reflect systematic biases of a null or small effect.

Differences in verbal and nonverbal IQ test scores in children with autism spectrum disorder

BackgroundIntelligence tests are a fundamental component of diagnostic assessments for children with suspected autism spectrum disorder (ASD). There are many assessments available, but scores across tests may not be comparable in children with ASD. MethodEighty children (68 boys) age 4–14 years with ASD completed the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales, 5th Edition (SB5), a verbal measure of intelligence, and the Leiter International Performance Scale – Revised (Leiter-R), a nonverbal measure of intelligence. ResultsAlthough discrepancies went in both directions, we found significantly higher mean scores on the Leiter-R than SB5 (9.6 point difference). Children younger than 8 years had more pronounced discrepancies (13.8 points vs. 3.5 points for >8 years), and children with less-developed language skills had greater discrepancies (13.1 points vs. 5.8 points for higher language skills). ConclusionThis suggests these IQ tests are not interchangeable and language demands may produce different results that could impact clinician interpretation. Both clinicians and researchers should be aware of the likely impact of adopting primarily verbal vs. nonverbal tests when assessing children with ASD, especially those with less language.

Evaluating subjective cognitive impairment in the adult epilepsy clinic: Effects of depression, number of antiepileptic medications, and seizure frequency

ObjectiveSubjective cognitive complaints are a frequent concern of patients with epilepsy. The Aldenkamp–Baker Neuropsychological Assessment Schedule (ABNAS) is a patient-reported scale validated to measure adverse cognitive effects of antiepileptic drugs (AEDs). The goals of this study were to identify predictors of patient-reported cognitive dysfunction and to assess the relationship between subjective and objective cognitive impairment. MethodsThe Cleveland Clinic Knowledge Program Data Registry was used to identify adult patients seen in outpatient epilepsy clinic from January to May 2015 and who completed the following scales: ABNAS for subjective cognitive impairment, Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) for depression, Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7-item (GAD-7) scale, Quality of Life in Epilepsy (QOLIE-10), and EuroQOL five dimensions questionnaire (EQ-5D) for health-related quality of life. Topiramate (TPM) was considered a high-risk medication for cognitive impairment. Patients were categorized into groups based on total ABNAS score: subjective cognitive impairment (ABNAS>15; N=270) and no subjective cognitive impairment (ABNAS≤15; N=400). Multivariable logistic regression models were constructed to identify independent predictors of subjective cognitive impairment. In a subset of patients who had neuropsychological testing within 6months of completing the ABNAS (N=60), Pearson correlations and multivariable logistic regression models, controlling for number of AEDs, depression, and anxiety, assessed the relationship between subjective cognitive impairment and objective cognitive performance on measures of intelligence, attention/working memory, verbal fluency, naming, processing speed, manual dexterity, visuomotor processing, and verbal memory. ResultsForty percent of patients in the overall sample (N=270/670) reported cognitive impairment. The variables most strongly associated with subjective cognitive impairment were PHQ-9 score, number of AEDs, and seizure frequency. In the subset of patients with neuropsychological testing, ABNAS score was correlated with anxiety (r=0.44), depression (r=0.38), and attention/working memory (r=−0.31). After adjusting for depression and anxiety, patients who endorsed subjective cognitive impairment scored significantly lower on measures of nonverbal intelligence and attention/working memory, but not on other cognitive measures. ConclusionsSubjective cognitive impairment as reported on the ABNAS is most strongly associated with depressive symptomatology, number of AEDs, and seizure frequency, but not with most objective cognitive measures. Identifying these three predictors provides a clear framework to understand and address subjective cognitive complaints in adult patients with epilepsy.

Associations Between Theory of Mind, Executive Function, and Friendship Quality in Middle Childhood

Despite our wealth of knowledge regarding theory of mind (ToM) development in preschool, less is known about development and the processes that support ToM into middle childhood. The current study examined potential cognitive (i.e., executive function, verbal intelligence, and nonverbal intelligence) and social (i.e., socioeconomic status, siblings, and friendship quality) correlates of ToM in middle childhood. A total of 81 children (6.9–10.0 years of age) completed two ToM tasks (interpretive ToM and faux pas), three executive function tasks (backward-digit span, delay of gratification, and a dimensional change card sort task), a friendship-quality questionnaire, and verbal and nonverbal intelligence measures. Results indicated that executive function differentially related to ToM. Inhibition (i.e., delaying gratification) was positively related to accuracy on faux pas stories, whereas cognitive flexibility (i.e., dimensional change card sort) was related to accuracy on the interpretive ToM task. Social correlates typically found in pre-school (i.e., socioeconomic status and number of siblings) were not significant in our older sample. However, friendship quality was related to ToM performance, with negative friendship quality relating to better interpretive ToM for girls. Results indicate that older children continue to develop in ToM abilities, executive function continues to relate to ToM performance, and social experiences outside the family may be important to consider in ToM tasks appropriate for middle childhood.

Oral morphosyntactic competence as a predictor of reading comprehension in children with specific language impairment.

Children with a diagnosis of specific language impairment (SLI) present impaired oral comprehension. According to the simple view of reading, general amodal linguistic capacity accounts for both oral and reading comprehension. Considering this, we should expect SLI children to display a reading comprehension deficit. However, previous research regarding the association between reading disorders and SLI has yielded inconsistent results. To study the influence of prior oral comprehension competence over reading comprehension during the first years of reading acquisition of bilingual Catalan-Spanish children with SLI (ages 7-8). We assessed groups of bilingual Catalan-Spanish SLI and matched control children at ages 7 and 8 with standardized reading comprehension tasks including grammatical structures, sentence and text comprehension. Early oral competence and prior non-verbal intelligence were also measured and introduced into regression analyses with the participants' reading results in order to state the relation between the comprehension of oral and written material. Although we found no significant differences between the scores of our two participant groups in the reading tasks, data regarding their early oral competence, but not non-verbal intelligence measures, significantly influence their reading outcome. The results extend our knowledge regarding the course of literacy acquisition of children with SLI and provide evidence in support of the theories that assume common linguistic processes to be responsible for both oral and reading comprehension.