Investigation of the dual route in French children with specific language impairment

Purpose : Children with a specific language impairment (SLI) often experience difficulties in reading acquisition, particularly in decoding. However, their precise profile in reading is still unclear. Therefore, the purpose of the present study is to analyse written word identification procedures, according to the Dual Route Cascaded Model (Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon, & Ziegler, 2001). Method : Twenty two children with SLI from 8 to 13 years were recruited. Their skills were compared to those of as many younger children matched for aloud reading performance. The efficiency of the lexical and sublexical reading procedures was evaluated by pseudoword, regular and irregular word reading aloud from the EVALEC battery (Sprenger-Charolles, Colé, Piquard-Kipffer, & Leloup, 2010). Results : Regarding lexicality, regularity, and complexity effects, group analysis shows few difference between SLI and typically developing children. However, multicase analysis shows that, while most children with SLI have a disorder of similar magnitude on both reading procedures, some of them suffer of a predominant impairment on the sublexical route. These latter children present a spoken language profile quite specific, with, in particular, a more important disorder on expressive phonology than the former children. Conclusions : As a group, development of reading procedures by children with SLI seems delayed rather than deviant. However, multicase analysis reveals heterogeneity in reading profiles, which need to be more studied, particularly in link with the oral language skills. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.