Reading in children of primary school age - A comparative study of children with hearing impairment and children with specific language impairment

Background. Seigneuric et al. (2000) showed that reading comprehension in primary school age children with typical language development (TD) is strongly dependent on working memory. The purpose of the present study was to compare reading comprehension in primary school age children with mild/moderate hearing impairment (HI) and children with a preschool diagnosis of specific language impairment (SLI). Our aim was to explore the relative contribution of linguistic and working memory variables to reading comprehension.
Material and Methods. The participants were 12 children with HI, 18 children with a preschool diagnosis of SLI, and 31 children with typical language development, 9-12 years of age. A range of language and reading measures were used as well as working memory tests: a competing language processing task and a nonword repetition test.
Results. The children with HI performed as well as the group of children with TD on measures of reading (decoding and comprehension), whereas the children with SLI were outperformed by the children with HI and the children with TD. Reading comprehension was best predicted by rapid automatized naming (RAN) for the children with HI and by story comprehension in the children with SLI.
Conclusion. The lack of correlation between working memory measures and reading in primary school age children in this study could be due to the small sample size, but another possible explanation is offered by theories claiming that language becomes increasingly independent of cognition with age.