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Reading Disabilities in SLI and Dyslexia Result From Distinct Phonological

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Reading Disabilities in SLI and Dyslexia Result From Distinct Phonological

Impairments
Christelle Nithart a; Elisabeth Demont b; Steve Majerus cd; Jacqueline Leybaert e; Martine Poncelet c; Marie-
Noëlle Metz-Lutz f
a
CNRS-UMR 7191 Laboratoire d'Imagerie et de Neurosciences Cognitives and Faculté de Psychologie,
Université Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg, France b Faculté de Psychologie, Université Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg,
France c Department of Cognitive Sciences, University of Liege, Liege, Belgium d National Fund of Scientific
Research (F.R.S.-FNRS), Belgium e Free University of Brussels, Brussels, Belgium f CNRS-UMR 7191
Laboratoire d'Imagerie et de Neurosciences Cognitives, Université Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg I, Strasbourg,
France

Online Publication Date: 01 May 2009

To cite this Article Nithart, Christelle, Demont, Elisabeth, Majerus, Steve, Leybaert, Jacqueline, Poncelet, Martine and Metz-Lutz,
Marie-Noëlle(2009)'Reading Disabilities in SLI and Dyslexia Result From Distinct Phonological Impairments',Developmental
Neuropsychology,34:3,296 — 311
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 DEVELOPMENTAL NEUROPSYCHOLOGY, 34(3), 296–311
Copyright © 2009 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 8756-5641 print / 1532-6942 online
DOI: 10.1080/87565640902801841

Reading Disabilities in SLI and Dyslexia Result

From Distinct Phonological Impairments

Christelle Nithart
CNRS-UMR 7191 Laboratoire d’Imagerie et de Neurosciences Cognitives
and Faculté de Psychologie
Université Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg I, Strasbourg, France

Elisabeth Demont
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Faculté de Psychologie
Université Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg I, Strasbourg, France

Steve Majerus
Department of Cognitive Sciences, University of Liege
Liege, Belgium
National Fund of Scientific Research (F.R.S.-FNRS)
Belgium

Jacqueline Leybaert
Free University of Brussels, Brussels, Belgium

Martine Poncelet
Department of Cognitive Sciences
University of Liege, Liege, Belgium

Marie-Noëlle Metz-Lutz
CNRS-UMR 7191 Laboratoire d’Imagerie et de Neurosciences Cognitives
Université Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg I, Strasbourg, France

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) who show impaired phonological processing are at
risk of developing reading disabilities, which raises the question of phonological impairment com-
monality between developmental dyslexia (DD) and SLI. In order to distinguish the failing phonologi-
cal processes in SLI and DD, we investigated the different steps involved in speech processing going

Correspondence should be addressed to Marie-Noëlle Metz-Lutz, CNRS-UMR 7191 Laboratoire d’Imagerie et

Neurosciences Cognitives, Faculté de Médecine, Université Louis Pasteur de Strasbourg, 4, rue Kirchleger, 67085
Strasbourg Cedex, France. E-mail: Marie-Noelle.Metz-Lutz@linc.u-strasbg.fr
This work was supported by a grant “École et Sciences cognitives AF42” from the French Ministry of Research (Ma-
rie-Noëlle Metz-Lutz) and a grant PRI 2003 No. 3088 (Anne de Saint Martin) from the Strasbourg University Hospitals.
Christelle Nithart was supported by a grant from the University Louis Pasteur of Strasbourg.
 PHONOLOGICAL DISORDERS IN SLI AND DYSLEXIC CHILDREN 297

from perceptual discrimination through various aspects of phonological memory. Our results show
that whereas the memory for sequence is likewise impaired in either disorder, children with SLI have
to face additional impairment in phonological discrimination and short-term memory, which may ac-
count for even poorer phonological awareness than dyslexics’.

ABBREVIATIONS

DD: developmental dyslexia, SLI: specific language impairment, CA: chronological age, C: con-
sonant, V: vowel, GPC: grapheme-to-phoneme conversion, RA: reading age, PA: phonological
awareness, STM: short-term memory, NW: non-words, ISR: immediate serial recall, HF: high-
phonotactic frequency, LF: low-phonotactic frequency.
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Phonology is regarded as one of the key factors determining the acquisition of reading abilities
(Morais, Bertelson, Cary, & Alegria, 1986). Learning to read requires the use of grapheme-
to-phoneme conversion rules (GPC), which implies the ability to perceive, segment, and manipu-
late explicitly the sounds of spoken words, an ability generally referred to as phonological aware-
ness. While a word is being read, the sequence of phonemes resulting from GPC has to be held in
some form of short-term buffer in order to be assembled and matched to the phonological and lexi-
cal representations stored in long-term memory (Nelson & Warrington, 1980). Children with de-
velopmental dyslexia (DD) or with particular subtypes of specific language impairment (SLI) are
affected by severe reading failure, often attributed to underlying phonological difficulties (Ramus
et al., 2003; Snowling, Bishop, & Stothard, 2000). Developmental dyslexia is defined as an unex-
pected difficulty in learning to read. It affects around 7% to 18% of school-age children. It has
been shown that some of these children are more likely to have difficulties with oral language per-
ception and/or production (Mody, 2003; Snowling, Gallagher, & Frith, 2003). Specific language
impairment refers to the delayed and protracted development of spoken language and affects
around 7% of 5- to 6-year-old children (Stark & Tallal, 1981; Tomblin et al., 1997). Among the
heterogeneous SLI population, which encompasses several subgroups (Conti-Ramsden, Crutch-
ley, & Botting, 1997; Rapin, Allen, & Dunn, 1992), 52% to 75% later experience difficulties with
the acquisition of written language (Scarborough & Dobrich, 1990; Tomblin, Zhang, Buckwalter,
& Catts, 2000). The overlap of impairment between dyslexia and SLI raises the question of
whether DD and SLI are distinct disorders or two manifestations of the same underlying phono-
logical deficit (Bishop & Snowling, 2004; Catts, Adlof, Hogan, & Weismer, 2005).
Although several theories have been propounded to account for sensory and motor disorders
associated with impaired literacy in developmental dyslexia, recent studies have provided argu-
ments to support the hypothesis that impaired phonological processing and particularly poor pho-
nological awareness was the causal deficit responsible for difficulties in the acquisition of reading
abilities (Boada & Pennington, 2006; Briscoe, Bishop, & Norbury, 2001; Fletcher-Flinn, Elmes,
& Strugnell, 1997; Ramus, 2003; Ramus et al., 2003). However, poor phonological awareness
may be observed even in instances of normal literacy acquisition, as in children with sensorineural
hearing loss (Briscoe et al., 2001). With respect to literacy problems in language-impaired chil-
dren, it has been suggested that they resulted from a phonological deficit, and particularly from
deficient phonological short-term memory (STM) (Briscoe et al., 2001; Newbury, Bishop, & Mo-
naco, 2005). Indeed, SLI children with impaired expressive phonology but normal phonological
 298 NITHART ET AL.

input processing have been shown to have age-related reading abilities, arguing that reading im-
pairment is associated with a subgroup of SLI characterized by poor phonological input process-
ing (Catts et al., 2005; Snowling et al., 2000). Although a few studies showed similar phonological
impairment in DD and SLI (Joanisse, Manis, Keating, & Seidenberg, 2000; Kamhi & Catts,
1986), more recent studies comparing phonological abilities in these conditions suggested that
they were distinct disorders, and that reading-impaired SLI children achieved poorer phonological
memory performance than dyslexics (Catts et al., 2005; Larkin & Snowling, 2008). Regarding the
issue of the impairment of early speech processing in DD and SLI, it has been assessed through
tasks based on the repetition or categorization of monosyllabic real words in which articulation or
lexical knowledge may have biased the identification of subtle difficulties in speech perception
(Boada & Pennington, 2006; Joanisse et al., 2000). Similarly, in the absence of reliable result pat-
tern for phoneme categorization or discrimination tasks, the locus of phonological deficit has re-
mained a matter of debate (Gathercole & Baddeley, 1990; Ramus, 2001; Serniclaes, Sprenger-
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Charolles, Carre, & Demonet, 2001; Tallal & Piercy, 1974).

A theoretical account of SLI as a phonological STM disorder has been put forward by
Gathercole and Baddeley who found that SLI children failed to repeat single non-words or recall
words with the same proficiency as either age- or verbal ability–matched (Gathercole & Baddeley,
1990). This hypothesis, supported by the results of subsequent studies using non-word repetition
tasks (Baddeley, Gathercole, & Papagno, 1998; Gathercole, Hitch, Service, & Martin, 1997; Mont-
gomery, 1995), led to view deficient phonological STM as an appropriate phenotypic feature to de-
termine types of reading impairment and SLI in order to understand their aetiology (Newbury et al.,
2005). While reduced verbal STM capacity has also been evidenced in dyslexic children by compar-
ison with age-matched controls (Roodenrys & Stokes, 2001), only SLI children showed poorer
STM capacity relative to control children matched for either reading age or language level (Mont-
gomery, 2003). The few studies comparing dyslexics and SLI children to controls evidenced a more
consistent pattern of verbal memory deficit in SLI children than in dyslexics (Boada & Pennington,
2006; Catts et al., 2005; Kamhi & Catts, 1986). However, besides impediments related to impaired
speech production in SLI, performance in a non-word repetition task may be influenced in different
ways in dyslexic and SLI children, by other phonological memory components. One such compo-
nent relates to the subjects’ knowledge of the phonological structure of their native language, which
shows through the lexicality and phonotactic frequency effects that bear on phonological STM per-
formance (Gathercole, Frankish, Pickering, & Peaker, 1999). For instance, in a verbal memory task,
the performance of the dyslexics appeared more sensitive to the lexical effect than that of controls
(Snowling, 1981), a finding that could be interpreted as the result of indisciminate/less discriminate
phonological sublexical representations (Goswami, 2000). Short-term memory for serial order is
another component of verbal STM that may influence the acquisition of reading abilities. Recent
models of verbal STM suggest that item- and order-related information might be related to distinct
STM systems, with a direct link from the serial order STM system to sublexical levels of language
representation (Gupta, 2003). Furthermore, a number of studies have shown that STM for serial or-
der was related to vocabulary knowledge and to the learning of new verbal sequences (Majerus,
Poncelet, Greffe, & Van der Linden, 2006).
To look further into the phonological theory of difficulties likely to impede the acquisition of
reading skills, the present study aimed at specifying whether or not the phonological deficit in DD
and SLI related to impairment at the same level of phonological input processing. To this purpose
 PHONOLOGICAL DISORDERS IN SLI AND DYSLEXIC CHILDREN 299

we compared the performance of children with specific reading impairment, and of children with
phonological syntactic SLI (Conti-Ramsden et al., 1997; Rapin et al., 1992). Phonological syntac-
tic language impairment, which affects both the input and output verbal processes, is particularly
likely to induce reading disabilities, unlike isolated expressive phonological disorder, which does
not jeopardize the acquisition of reading skills (Snowling et al., 2000). Several studies have shown
that when SLI does not concur with reading impairment, it is not associated with deficit in phono-
logical processing (Boada & Pennington, 2006; Catts et al., 2005; Kamhi & Catts, 1986; Snowling
et al., 2000). In order to discriminate between effects related to cognitive development or to the
reading level, our two reading-impaired groups were compared to control groups matched either
for chronological or reading age.
To address the question of the locus of phonological deficit causing reading impairment, we in-
vestigated the performance of the four groups in a series of tasks designed to evaluate each pro-
cessing step from perceptual discrimination through various aspects of phonological memory, in-
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cluding STM capacity, the interactions between STM and long-term phonological knowledge,
and serial order retention capacities, the latter being particularly involved in the early process of
reading acquisition. We hypothesized that despite the poor performance on phonological aware-
ness tasks common to both the SLI and DD groups, the two populations might exhibit different
phonological deficit profiles. More specifically, we predicted impaired phonological STM in SLI
children as a result of an inadequate grasp of the phonological structure of their native language.

METHOD

Participants
The experimental set comprised 24 reading-impaired children, referred by the Centre of Reference
for Learning Disabilities of the Paediatric Department of the Strasbourg University Hospitals. The
participants were selected on the basis of a delay in reading age of at least 18 months, a performance
IQ superior or equal to 85 (Wechsler Intelligence Scale–Third Edition [WISC–III]) (Wechsler,
1991), and the absence of visual, auditory, or neurological deficit. Two reading-impaired groups
were constituted on the basis of a multidisciplinary clinical diagnosis including investigations by a
speech therapist, a neuropsychologist, and a neuropediatrician. Absence of oral language impair-
ment in the dyslexics, and the clinical profile of phonological syntactic SLI were established on the
basis of the subjects’ performance on a battery of standardized verbal tests investigating speech pro-
duction, receptive and expressive vocabulary, and sentence reception and production. The 10 chil-
dren of the SLI group fulfilled the diagnostic criteria of phonological syntactic SLI according to
Rapin and Allen’s clinical typology (Conti-Ramsden & Botting, 1999; Rapin et al., 1992), with
scores at least 1.5 standard deviation below the mean score for age, at expressive and receptive vo-
cabulary, sentence repetition, verbal comprehension, and production tests (Échelle de Vocabulaire
en Images Peabody [EVIP] [Dunn, Thériault-Whalen, & Dunn, 1993], NEPSY [Korkman, Kirk, &
Kemp, 2003], Épreuve de Compréhension Syntaxique Sémantique [E.CO.S.SE] [Lecocq, 1996]).
Clinically, their oromotor ability was within normal range and their spontaneous utterances were
brief and grammatically defective with omissions or errors of function and grammatical inflections.
They also showed difficulties in the comprehension of complex words and sentences and of abstract
language. The 14 children included in the second group had a diagnosis of DD without history of de-
 300 NITHART ET AL.

layed language development, according to the parents’ report. Developmental dyslexia was ascer-
tained on the basis of normal performance in the various oral language tests, but performance evi-
dencing at least 18 months’ delay on the standardized French reading test “L’alouette” (Lefavrais,
1967). In this test consisting in a nonsensical text comprising 265 words ranging from common to
rarely used words, the reading score is computed by combining total reading time and errors. Both
dyslexic and SLI children scored within the age-related range on various nonverbal tasks including
visual memory tasks such as the Corsi Blocks Task (Milner, 1971) and the Benton Visual Retention
Test (Sivan, 1992). The two control groups included 10 normal readers each, matched to the experi-
mental groups for chronological age (CA) and for reading age (RA), respectively. They were re-
cruited among the relatives of hospital staff, and in schools of the neighborhood. They had normal
verbal performance and nonverbal reasoning abilities (PM47) (Raven, 1956, 1981) and no history of
neurological, visual, or auditory deficit. All the children and parents gave their written informed
consent before participating in the study (Table 1).
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The SLI children performed significantly worse than the dyslexics and normal readers on
the French version of the Peabody test (Dunn et al., 1993) (F(3,40) = 3.16, p < . 01). Their pic-
ture naming scores were also significantly lower than those of the CA and dyslexic groups
(F(3,40) = 4.82, p < .01). Subjects in the RA group were matched to both reading-impaired groups
upon their scores on the standardized French reading test “L’alouette” (Lefavrais, 1967), so that
the children in the dyslexic, SLI, and RA groups all showed significantly lower reading scores
than those achieved by children in the CA group. Table 1 summarizes the main features of oral and
written language of the four groups.

Phonological Processing Assessment

Perceptual Phonological Discrimination

The phonological discrimination task consisted of 124 pairs of CV (N = 64) or CCV (N = 60) syl-
lables divided into 62 “different” pairs (e.g., /ta/-/da/) and 62 “identical” pairs (e.g., /bYa/-/bYa/).
They were presented at 250-msec inter-stimulus intervals. The initial consonant of the “different”
pairs varied by one phonetic feature, either voicing (N = 26) (e.g., /pa/-/ba/) or place of articula-
tion (N = 36) (e.g., /ta/-/pa/). The vocalic context was kept constant for all pairs (/a/) while the ini-
tial consonants were stop, fricative, liquid, or nasal consonants, either clustered or not; allowing to
control the mode of articulation and complexity. As a consequence, some items did sound like
French words. However, a previous study suggested that there was no lexical effect in this case

TABLE 1
Clinical Features and Verbal Performances of the Four Groups

Groups SLI DD RA CA

N 10 14 10 10
Chronological Age (y;m) 11;9 (2;0) 11;2 (2;1) 8;7 (1;1) 11;9 (2 ;10)
Reading Age (y;m) 7;11 (1;1) 7;10 (0;9) 8;8 (0;11) 11;10 (1;6) p < .001
Peabody (standard score) 100.8 (6.5) 116.2 (14.2) 120.9 (12.5) 118.1 (10) p < .01
Picture Naming (%) 76.9 (10.7) 85.3 (5.7) 82.2 (5.1) 87.5 (6.3) p < .01

Note. SLI = specific language-impaired children; DD = developmental dyslexic children; RA = children matched for
reading age; CA = children matched for chronological age.
 PHONOLOGICAL DISORDERS IN SLI AND DYSLEXIC CHILDREN 301

(Van Reybroeck, 2003). The items were presented through headphones and the children were
asked to answer orally after each item whether the two syllables were identical or different.

Phonological Awareness

Phonological awareness (PA) was assessed in three tasks involving different levels of process-
ing: rhyme, syllable, and phoneme detection. In the three tasks, the children were presented with
two pictures on a computer screen and asked to press one of two keys of the keyboard colored in
green for “yes” and “red” for no responses. In order to avoid a confounding effect of picture recog-
nition and/or naming, the pictures were named by the examiner. In the rhyme and phoneme detec-
tion tasks, the picture names corresponded to frequent monosyllabic words, and to disyllabic
words in the syllable detection task. Their age of acquisition was less than 72 months (Alario &
Ferrand, 1999). Each task comprised 4 practice and 24 experimental trials, with an equal number
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of yes and no responses.

In the rhyme detection task, the subjects had to detect whether the names of two pictures
rhymed (e.g., /lu/ - /Gu/ vs /nwA/ - /fV/). In the syllable and phoneme detection tasks, they were
asked to determine whether the two picture names had a common syllable (e.g., /tomat/ - /moto/ vs
/kamjT/ - /sizo/) or phoneme (e.g., /bCt/ - /kyb/ vs /pyl/ - /rCb/). In order to control the influence of
position within the word and co-articulation on syllable or phoneme detection, the place of the tar-
get within the lexical item varied. In one half of the pairs the target was in the initial position of the
noun of the two pictures (e.g., /sizo - /sitrT/; /Ga/ - /GDz/), in the other half, the place of the target
was different in the two nouns (e.g., /sapR/ - /pRgwR/; /bCt/ - /kyb/). As the common speech seg-
ment could be identified not only upon auditory input but also from its sensorimotor and ortho-
graphic representations, the pairs of picture were arranged in order to limit the effects on detection
of labial or orthographic similarities of the corresponding nouns. Some pairs, which did not
have a common unit included phoneme or syllable with labial similarity (e.g., /mutT/ - /pusDt/;
/Fyp/ - /GjR/), and in the pairs of nouns with common rhyme or phoneme, one half had similar
and the other half different spelling. For the rhyme detection task we also included items with ei-
ther similar vowel (e.g., /ryG/ - /lyn/) or coda (e.g., /tart/ - /pCrt/) to prevent the use of strategies
based on the perceptual salience of the vowel or the final sound of the nouns.

Phonological Short-Term Memory

Phonological short-term memory (STM) was assessed through four different tasks designed to
measure STM components, such as item- and serial order-related information, and the influence
of lexical and phonological long-term knowledge. Two recognition and two repetition tasks were
run under E-prime (Psychological Software Tools, Pittsburgh, 2000). The stimuli were recorded
by a trained female native speaker of French, digitized, and edited into individual files. They were
presented binaurally via headphones connected to a laptop computer. In the recognition tasks, the
children responded by pressing the “yes” or “no” keys. In the repetition tasks, the responses were
recorded using a microphone and transcribed for later scoring with regard to accuracy of recall.

Non-word repetition task. To assess phonological short-term memory and check out for a
possible effect of phonological knowledge, two lists of 30 non-words (one with CVC and another
with CVCCVC strings) were presented for the subjects to repeat. Each list contained an equal
 302 NITHART ET AL.

number of non-words matched for spoken duration. The items consisted of diphones with either a
high phonotactic frequency (HF, mean frequency: 808) or a low phonotactic frequency (LF, mean
frequency: 126) (e.g., HF /badmaf/ ; LF : /fummyv/ for CVCCVC strings; HF /tTf/ vs LF /tVf/ for
CVC strings). The phonotactic frequencies were determined using the French phonetic database
by Tubach & Boë (1990). The responses were tape-recorded and transcribed for subsequent scor-
ing by two independent evaluators.

Non-word recognition task. This task maximized sublexical phonological processing and
storage requirements, in order to measure the capacity to recognize phonological item-related in-
formation, independently of serial order-related information. In order to maximize the reliance on
phonological item STM, the stimuli used were lists of unfamiliar non-words with a CVC struc-
ture. Fifty-six targets and 56 non-word negative probes were constructed, with a mean duration of
696 (+96) msec and a mean phonotactic frequency of 196. The non-word negative probes differed
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from the targets by the initial consonant only. It was furthermore ensured that the diphone
phonotactic frequency was similar for the targets and non-word negative probes, so that the nega-
tive probes could not be rejected on the basis of their having a different degree of phonological fa-
miliarity than targets. Each target list, comprised two to five items. After a 500-msec pure tone, an
equal number of positive probe items, and as many negative probe items, were presented in ran-
dom order. The participants had to signal, for each probe item, whether or not it had been on the
target list by pressing the “yes” or “no” buttons. There were four trials for each target list.

Immediate serial recall of word and non-word lists (ISR). In order to assess the influ-
ence of phonological and lexical knowledge and that of sequence length on STM, an ISR task was
constructed. The stimuli used fell into 3 categories of items, as follows: 42 HF and 42 LF CVC
non-words, and 42 CVC words. The words were frequent concrete words, with a mean lexical fre-
quency of 362 for third-grade children (Lete, Sprenger-Charolles, & Cole, 2004) (e.g., vite –
rêve), matched for phonotactic frequency to the HF non-words (HFnw) (e.g., /zit/ /rDz/). The com-
parison of words and non-words of similar phonotactic frequency (1,727 for words and 1,544 for
HF non-words) allowed us to examine the influence of phonological lexical long-term knowledge,
while the comparison of non-words contrasted with respect to phonotactic frequency (269 for LF
non-words) allowed us to evaluate the influence of phonological sublexical knowledge on the sub-
jects’ performance. In total, 36 lists were presented, that is, 12 for each stimulus category (six pairs
of lists comprising an identical number of items, ranging from one through six). The responses
were recorded and scored in two ways. For list scoring, one point was allowed if the complete list
was repeated in the correct order. For item scoring, one point was allowed for each item correctly
repeated regardless of its position in the list, or whether the list was complete or not.

Recognition of the serial order of digits. The task assessed the memory for serial order
and the effect of sequence length. The children were presented with two lists of digits and immedi-
ately after, had to decide whether or not the order of digits was identical in the two lists (e.g., list 1:
2-3-1 ; list 2: 2-3-1 vs. list 1: 3-2-1 ; list 2: 2-3-1). The length of the lists ranged from three through
six items. There were six trials per sequence length. A total of 24 trials were presented, in half of
which the digits appeared in the same order in both lists. The children responded by pressing ei-
ther the “yes” or “no” key according to whether they thought the digits were pronounced in the
same order or not.
 PHONOLOGICAL DISORDERS IN SLI AND DYSLEXIC CHILDREN 303

Procedure and Data Analysis

The children were tested individually during one or two sessions depending on their age. The tests
were administered by a trained experimenter in a fixed order. The analyses of variance (ANOVA)
were followed by post hoc analyses (Newman-Keuls test, p < .05).

RESULTS

Perceptual Phonological Discrimination

As the four groups performed at ceiling on similar pairs, only the responses to dissimilar pairs
were analyzed. The ANOVA, performed using group and phonological features (voicing and
place of articulation) as factors, showed a significant main effect of group (F(3,39) = 8.17, p <
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.001) and phonological features (F(1,39) = 58.82, p < .0001) with a significant interaction
(F(3,39) = 6.71, p < .001) (Table 2). Post hoc analyses showed that only the performance of SLI
children was significantly poorer, compared to the other groups, in particular with regard to pairs
of syllables opposed by voicing. As children of the RA group, SLI children were less accurate in
discriminating voicing than the place of articulation. The ANOVA with group and mode of articu-
lation as factors, showed a significant effect of group (F(3,39) = 6.37, p < .01) and mode of articu-
lation (F(2,78) = 12.1, p < .001), but no significant interaction (F(6,78) = 1.11, ns) (Table 3). Post
hoc analyses showed the same group effect, with significantly poorer achievements for SLI chil-
dren compared to the other groups, and significantly greater difficulties to process pairs involving

TABLE 2
Mean Percentage (Standard Deviation) of Correct Responses in the Phonological
Discrimination Task as a Function of the Phonetic Feature, and in the Phonological
Awareness Task as a Function of the Speech Segment

SLI DD RA CA

Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD

Perceptual discrimination task

Identical 90.8 9.6 91.8 7.8 94.7 4.9 98.4 2.2
Different
Place of articulation 86.2 14.5 91.4 8.6 93.8 5.7 98.3 2.7 p < .001
Voicing 67.2 17.5 87.2 10.3 82.4 13.2 92.6 8.5
Mode of articulation
Occlusive 73.8 14.6 86.9 6.8 85.6 9.9 93.8 6.3 p < .01
Fricative 83.5 13.8 93.9 5.5 92.0 7.2 98.0 2.6
Liquid 83.8 19.6 89.4 15.2 96.3 6.0 98.8 3.9
Phonological awareness tasks
Rhyme 74.5 13.9 86.2 6.5 91.7 9.6 93.3 8.2 p < .001
Syllable 76.6 12.0 79.9 12.2 85.8 10.4 92.5 6.5 p < .05
Phoneme 61.7 23.9 71.1 24.1 82.5 8.3 84.2 12.7 p < .05

Note. SLI = specific language-impaired children; DD = developmental dyslexic children; RA = children matched for
reading age; CA = children matched for chronological age.
 304 NITHART ET AL.

TABLE 3
Mean Percentage (Standard Deviation) of Correct Responses in the Phonological
Short-Term Memory Tasks

SLI DD RA CA
Phonological STM
tasks Length Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD

Non-word repetition
HFnw 1 74.3 14.2 88.9 8.1 92.7 5.4 90.7 7.6 p < .0001
2 44.3 19.6 76.7 11.7 86.7 7.4 84.4 9.4
LFnw 1 66.7 19.4 83.3 6.9 85.7 5.7 82.6 11.6
2 28.3 13.7 65.3 11.8 80.0 7.7 80.4 10.2
Non-word 2 80.7 9.5 75.6 17.5 85.6 13.2 91.4 8.1 p < .01
recognition 3 57.6 7.9 56.3 6.6 67.9 9.4 69.3 11.6
4 56.6 9.7 59.1 10.3 55.0 10.4 63.3 7.0
5 53.8 5.6 55.9 5.3 55.5 7.8 61.3 8.4
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Immediate serial
recall
Scoring by correct 1 96.7 10.5 94.6 9.0 90.7 14.7 100.0 0.0 p < .05
list recall 2 93.3 16.1 92.9 18.2 98.3 5.3 100.0 0.0
3 68.3 25.4 76.2 21.4 85.2 15.5 86.7 15.3
4 3.3 7.0 1.2 4.5 8.3 11.8 16.7 17.6
5 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 1.7 5.3 6.7 11.7
6 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
Scoring by correct 1 80.8 18.9 83.9 19.2 94.2 7.9 91.7 12.4 p < .05
item recall 2 13.3 15.3 29.8 30.1 33.3 26.4 51.7 28.8
3 36.1 16.4 56.7 24.9 62.2 14.1 73.3 19.6
4 20.8 9.6 28.6 11.4 34.1 12.7 47.9 18.0
5 14.0 6.4 20.0 12.5 19.0 10.5 31.7 14.4
6 10.8 6.2 13.1 7.6 12.5 8.9 20.3 9.9
Words 84.7 11.5 88.7 11.3 85.8 8.5 95.6 4.4 p = .08
HFnw 65.6 22.1 77.4 25.7 79.7 6.7 83.3 16.8
LFnw 60.0 19.5 67.5 24.6 89.2 10.6 86.1 15.8 p < .05
Recognition of the 3 90.0 11.7 96.4 7.1 96.7 7.0 96.7 7.0 p < .001
serial order of digits 4 58.3 14.2 81.0 18.3 91.7 16.2 95.0 11.2
5 70.0 18.9 63.1 14.9 78.3 15.8 93.3 8.6
6 55.0 20.9 61.9 24.0 58.3 16.2 66.7 17.6

Note. HFnw = high-phonotactic frequency non-words; LFnw = low-phonotactic frequency non-words.

occlusives, as opposed to fricatives, regardless of whether these were contrasted with respect to
voicing or place of articulation.

Phonological Awareness

The PA tasks showed a significant main effect of group as regards response accuracy (rhyme de-
tection F(3,38) = 6.9, p < .001, common syllable detection F(3,36 = 4.11), p < .05, and phoneme
detection F(3,38) = 3.77, p < .05) (Table 2). Post hoc analyses showed a significant difference be-
tween the SLI group and the three other groups with respect to rhyme detection. In the syllable de-
tection task, the children with SLI and DD performed worse than the CA controls, while in the
phoneme detection task, only SLI children underachieved, compared to the control groups.
 PHONOLOGICAL DISORDERS IN SLI AND DYSLEXIC CHILDREN 305

Phonological Short-Term Memory

Non-Word Repetition Task

The ANOVA performed using group, item length, and phonotactic frequency as factors revealed a
significant main effect of group (F(3,37) = 28.03, p < .0001), length (F(3,37) = 90.66, p < .0001),
and phonotactic frequency (F(1,37) = 49.08, p < .0001). The only interaction that was significant
was the group by length interaction (F(3,37) = 18.76, p < .0001) (Table 3). Post hoc analyses
showed a significant underachievement for the SLI group, compared to the other groups.
Newman-Keuls tests showed that they repeated fewer disyllabic non-words than did the other
groups, while as regards monosyllabic non-words, their performance was only significantly lower
than that of the CA controls. Moreover, only the dyslexic and SLI children underperformed in re-
sponse to disyllabic as opposed to monosyllabic non-words. Post hoc analyses on the group by fre-
quency interaction revealed poorer performance for non-words with low phonotactic frequency
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compared to non-words with high phonotactic frequency in all groups except for the CA controls.

Non-Word Recognition Task

Owing to the rate of at-chance-performance obtained for the SLI group and the RA controls in
trials involving 4- and 5-item lists, the two-way ANOVA using group and sequence length as fac-
tors was carried out only on trials involving 2- and 3-item lists. It showed a significant main effect
of group (F(3,35) = 5.53, p < .01) and length (F(1,35) = 87.64, p < .0001), without significant in-
teraction (F(3,35) < 1, ns) (Table 3). Post hoc analyses showed that the dyslexics performed less
effectively than the CA controls and that the achievement of the SLI group was lower than that of
either of the control groups.

Immediate Serial Recall of Word and Non-Word Lists

As children in the SLI group failed to recall 6-, 5-, and 4-item sequences, and because only one
dyslexic succeeded in processing the 4-item sequences, only scores obtained for 1-, 2-, and 3-item
sequences were considered in the ANOVAs. The performance scored as successful “list recall” were
entered into an ANOVA, with group and sequence length as factors, which showed a significant
main effect of group (F(3,39) = 4.02, p < .05) and length (F(2,78) = 134.14, p < .0001). The interac-
tion failed to reach statistical significance (F(6,78) = 1.89, p = .09). Post hoc analyses showed that
the SLI group performed worse than the CA controls. Their results, however, were only lower than
those of the CA controls in trials involving 3-item lists, even if they showed a significant effect of
length starting from trials involving 2-item lists. By comparison, the performance of the dyslexics
and controls significantly decreased only when 3-item lists were involved. As regards the “item re-
call” scores, the ANOVA showed a significant main effect of group (F(3,40) = 3.92, p < .05) and
length F(2,80) = 118.35, p < .0001) with a significant interaction (F(6,80) = 3.28, p < .01) (Table 3).
Post hoc analyses evidenced that the SLI group performed significantly worse than both control
groups. Their performance was the poorest of all the groups in trials involving 3-item lists, which
was where all four groups showed a significant decrease in performance.
According to the purpose of the task, which was to examine the effect of phonological lexical
and sublexical knowledge on STM performance, we carried-out two separate analyses. The first
 306 NITHART ET AL.

involved the word versus HFnw contrast, in order to examine a possible lexical effect. The second
involved the HFnw versus LFnw contrast to assess a possible effect of phonotactic frequency.
Considering the first contrast, and the “list recall” achievements, the two-way ANOVA per-
formed using group and the item type as factors revealed a significant effect of the item type
(F(1,40) = 5.88, p < .05). The effect of group (F(3,40) = 2.44, p = .08) and the interaction (F(3,40)
< 1) failed to reach significance. Post hoc analyses of the interaction did not show any lexical ef-
fect per group. The analysis of the “item recall” achievements using an ANOVA showed only a
significant effect of the item type (F(1,40 = 15.25, p < .001) without any significant effect of group
(F(3,40) = 1.45, p = .08) or interaction (F(3,40) < 1) (Table 3). Post hoc comparisons revealed a
significant difference between the SLI and CA groups, and a significant lexical effect only for the
SLI group. Considering the comparison between HFnw and LFnw, the two-way ANOVA per-
formed on “list recall” scores showed a main effect of group (F(3,40) = 3.32, p < .05), but no sig-
nificant effect of the item type (F(1,40) = 2.28, ns) or interaction (F(3,40) = 2.38, p = .08). Post
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hoc comparisons revealed underachievement by the SLI group only by comparison with the CA
controls. As for the “item recall” measurements, ANOVA showed a significant main effect of
group (F(3,40) = 3.5, p < .05), and interaction (F(3,40) = 3.74, p < .05), but no significant effect of
the item type (F(1,40) < 1) (Table 3). Post hoc comparisons revealed the poorer performance of
the SLI group, compared to either control group, and a significant effect of phonotactic frequency
only for the dyslexics.

Recognition of the Serial Order of Digits

In this task, three out of the four groups (dyslexics, SLI children, and RA controls) performed
at chance on 6-digit sequences, consequently they were left out for subsequent analysis. The
ANOVA, performed using group and sequence length as factors, showed a significant main effect
of group (F(3,40) = 11.96, p < .001) and length (F(2,80) = 27.50, p < .0001), with a significant in-
teraction (F(6,80) = 6.29, p < .001) (Table 3). Post hoc analyses revealed that the performance of
dyslexic and SLI children was significantly poorer than that of either control groups. The SLI
group performed significantly worse than all the other groups in trials involving 4-digit sequences,
while the achievements of both the dyslexic and SLI children were below those of CA controls in
trials involving 5-digit sequences.

DISCUSSION

The main finding of this study is that, although poorer phonological awareness by comparison
with normal readers was evidenced both in developmental dyslexics and reading-impaired SLI
children, these two populations appear to be differently impaired at several levels of phonological
processing. Indeed, our results corroborate the findings of previous studies suggesting that a defi-
cit in phonological awareness underlies reading impairment in both dyslexic and SLI children
(Ramus et al., 2003; Snowling, 2001), and also that SLI may be regarded as a disorder of phono-
logical STM non-word repetition (Gathercole & Baddeley, 1990; Newbury et al., 2005). Our re-
sults also show that the reading-impaired SLI children have an additional deficit in early percep-
tual speech processing and in some aspects of phonological memory.
 PHONOLOGICAL DISORDERS IN SLI AND DYSLEXIC CHILDREN 307

Impaired Phonological Discrimination in the SLI

In the present study, the SLI children but not the dyslexics, achieved significantly poorer perfor-
mance than the control groups in discriminating two syllables contrasted by voicing. This result is
consistent with the conclusion of Joanisse et al. (2000) who showed that only language-impaired
dyslexics exhibited less discriminate perceptual categories of speech sounds, contrary to develop-
mental dyslexics. The design of our speech perceptual task using unmodified natural speech and
the selection of the dyslexics upon strict criteria, excluding subjects with any previous speech or
language delay, may account for the contrast between our results and those of other studies
(Serniclaes et al., 2001; Tallal, Merzenich, Miller, & Jenkins, 1998). Accordingly, poor phonolog-
ical discrimination could be regarded as one of the main symptoms allowing to distinguish SLI
children from the other reading-disabled children in the population studied here. As far as, in nor-
mal child development, initial speech production is instrumental in the refinement of the early
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ability to discriminate very subtle speech contrasts (Locke, Bekken, McMinn-Larson, & Wein,
1995), one cannot rule out that poor phonological discrimination in SLI children may result from
delayed and/or distorted early experience in speech production. Poor phonological discrimination
may also account for the lower performance of the SLI children compared to the dyslexics in pho-
nological awareness tasks, such as rhyme and phoneme detection, and in phonological short-term
memory tasks.

Impaired Phonological Short-Term Memory in the SLI Only, but Poor Memory
for Sequences in Both Children With SLI and Dyslexics

The assessment of short-term memory pointed out the deficit in phonological STM as a typical
feature of our SLI group, which differentiated them from the DD group. This result is consistent
with the findings of previous studies based on non-word repetition tasks (Bishop, North, &
Donlan, 1996; Gathercole & Baddeley, 1990). It was further supported in this study not only by
the repetition of non-words, but also by the serial recall and serial order of digit recognition tasks.
Indeed, in these tasks the performance of SLI children appeared to decline, as a function of the
number of items on a list, earlier than did the performance of all the other groups, including the
dyslexics. Interestingly, a similar finding yielded by the recognition tasks rules out a possible ef-
fect of impaired speech on poorer repetition performance in the SLI compared to dyslexics.
Contrary to previous studies, we did not find reduced verbal STM capacity in the dyslexics
(Roodenrys & Stokes, 2001). However, as did the SLI children, they underperformed significantly
in STM tasks designed to evaluate the memory for sequences. To the extent that this particular ver-
bal STM component is involved in GPC, one may suggest that reading difficulties experienced by
SLI children and dyslexics might to some degree be related to their deficit in memory for se-
quences. However, one cannot rule out the possibility that the practice of GPC contributes to the
development of this STM memory component.

Children with SLI and Dyslexics do not Rely on Long-Term Phonological Knowledge
in the Same Way

In order to evaluate separately the influence of long-term lexical and sublexical phonological
knowledge on verbal STM, we used in the recall and repetition tasks words and non-words with
 308 NITHART ET AL.

different phonotactic frequencies. Indeed, the comparison between words and non-words of high
phonotactic frequency enabled us to point out the influence of lexical knowledge, whereas the
comparison of results in tasks opposing non-words with high phonotactic frequency and non-
words with low phonotactic frequency allowed us to estimate the weight of sublexical phonologi-
cal long-term knowledge on phonological STM. In the non-word repetition task, performance was
influenced by phonotactic frequency in the dyslexic and SLI children and the RA controls. As re-
gards the recall task, only the dyslexics showed a significant effect of phonotactic frequency,
whereas the SLI children showed a significant lexical effect. These contrasting results between
SLI and dyslexic children suggest that their long-term phonological knowledge was brought into
play in ways that differed from that of controls. Indeed, the dyslexics appeared more sensitive to
phonotactic frequency than the normal readers. Consistent with the idea of weaker phonological
sublexical representations in dyslexics (Goswami, 2000), one may assume that their knowledge
may help them recall high-phonotactic frequency, but not low-phonotactic frequency non-words,
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and that their inadequate phonological knowledge gets even more detrimental as the challenge in-
creases. With regard to the SLI children, who recalled fewer non-words than words, compared to
controls and dyslexics, they displayed a greater lexical effect. Resorting to lexical knowledge may
be interpreted as a compensation for their poor sublexical knowledge. Indeed, impaired phonolog-
ical discrimination in the early development of SLI children may have altered their sensitivity to
the statistical rules of speech, and consequently prevented the development of sublexical knowl-
edge (Joanisse & Seidenberg, 1998). However, the limited lexicon available to SLI children may
also account for their poor phonological knowledge, inasmuch as vocabulary growth contributes
to the refinement of phonological representations (Maillart, Schelstraete, & Hupet, 2004). But, in
our study, the frequent and concrete words used in the memory task may have favored the reliance
on long-term lexical knowledge, despite their reduced vocabulary. This result provides evidence
for a more substantial deficit in sublexical knowledge in SLI children than in dyslexics.

CONCLUSION

The present study shows that reading-impaired SLI and DD children present different profiles of
phonological deficit, with additional impairment in phonological discrimination and STM mem-
ory in SLI participants. Investigating the different components of verbal memory revealed that
reading impairment was associated, in both reading-disabled groups, with limited memory for se-
quences, a component required for the practice of GPC. It also stresses the poorer phonological
STM capacity and weaker sublexical phonological representations in the SLI.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors thank Nathalie Heider for her help with linguistic corrections, Anne De Saint Martin,
Emmanuelle Lorea, Laure Créplet, Stéphanie Thuillier, and Anne Boesch for their help in the clin-
ical evaluation, and the participants and their parents for their time and commitment to the
research.
 PHONOLOGICAL DISORDERS IN SLI AND DYSLEXIC CHILDREN 309

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