Kate Nation

Vocabulary is important for some, but not all reading skills

Although there is evidence for a close link between the development of oral vocabulary and reading comprehension, less clear is whether oral vocabulary skills relate to the development of word-level reading skills. This study investigated vocabulary and literacy in 81 children aged 8 to 10 years. In regression analyses, vocabulary accounted for unique variance in exception word reading and reading comprehension, but not text reading accuracy, decoding, or regular word reading. Consistent with these data, children with poor reading comprehension exhibited oral vocabulary weaknesses and read fewer exception words correctly. These findings demonstrate that oral vocabulary is associated with some, but not all, reading skills. Results are discussed in terms of current models of reading development.

Developmental differences in sensitivity to semantic relations among good and poor comprehenders: evidence from semantic priming.

Semantic priming for category coordinates (e.g. CAT-DOG; AEROPLANE-TRAIN) and for pairs of words related through function (e.g. BROOM-FLOOR; SHAMPOO-HAIR) was assessed in children with good and poor reading comprehension, matched for decoding skill. Lexical association strength was also manipulated by comparing pairs of words that were highly associated with pairs that shared low association strength. Both groups of children showed priming for function-related words, but for the category co-ordinates, poor comprehenders only showed priming if the category pairs also shared high association strength. Good comprehenders showed priming for category-related targets, irrespective of the degree of prime-target association. These findings are related to models of language development in which category knowledge is gradually abstracted and refined from childrens event-based knowledge and it is concluded that in the absence of explicit co-occurrence, poor comprehenders are less sensitive to abstract semantic relations than normal readers.

A longitudinal investigation of early reading and language skills in children with poor reading comprehension.

BACKGROUND Poor comprehenders have difficulty comprehending connected text, despite having age-appropriate levels of reading accuracy and fluency. We used a longitudinal design to examine earlier reading and language skills in children identified as poor comprehenders in mid-childhood. METHOD Two hundred and forty-two children began the study at age 5. Further assessments of language and reading skill were made at 5.5, 6, 7 and 8 years. At age 8, fifteen children met criteria for being a poor comprehender and were compared to 15 control children both concurrently and prospectively. RESULTS Poor comprehenders showed normal reading accuracy and fluency at all ages. Reading comprehension was poor at each time point and, notably, showed minimal increases in raw score between 6 and 8 years. Phonological skills were generally normal throughout, but mild impairments in expressive and receptive language, listening comprehension and grammatical understanding were seen at all ages. CONCLUSIONS Children identified as poor comprehenders at 8 years showed the same reading profile throughout earlier development. Their difficulties with the non-phonological aspects of oral language were present at school entry and persisted through childhood, showing that the oral language weaknesses seen in poor comprehenders in mid-childhood are not a simple consequence of their reading comprehension impairment.

Sensitivity to eye gaze in autism: Is it normal? Is it automatic? Is it social?

Children with autism are developmentally delayed in following the direction of another persons gaze in social situations. A number of studies have measured reflexive orienting to eye gaze cues using Posner-style laboratory tasks in children with autism. Some studies observe normal patterns of cueing, suggesting that children with autism are alert to the significance of the eyes, whereas other studies reveal an atypical pattern of cueing. We review this contradictive evidence to consider the extent to which sensitivity to gaze is normal, and ask whether apparently normal performance may be a consequence of atypical (nonsocial) mechanisms. Our review concludes by highlighting the importance of adopting a developmental perspective if we are to understand the reasons why people with autism process eye gaze information atypically.

Factors Influencing Syntactic Awareness Skills in Normal Readers and Poor Comprehenders.

Using a word order correction paradigm, we assessed syntactic awareness skills in children with good and poor reading comprehension, matched for age, decoding skill, and nonverbal ability. Poor comprehenders performed less well than normal readers, and the performance of both groups was influenced by the syntactic complexity and semantic ambiguity of the sentences. These findings support the view that poor comprehenders have language processing difficulties encompassing grammatical as well as semantic weaknesses, although their phonological processing skills are normal. The implications of such language weaknesses for the development of skilled reading are discussed.

Why reading comprehension fails - Insights from developmental disorders

Developmental difficulties with reading comprehension are not uncommon. This article examines the nature of reading comprehension deficits in three groups of children: children identified as having relatively specific impairments in reading comprehension, children with autism spectrum disorder, and children with specific language impairment. Our review emphasizes that in all three groups, poor reading comprehension is often associated with weaknesses in oral language. We conclude that a useful framework for understanding the complex relationship between language and reading in children with developmental disorders is provided by a model that sees variations in phonological and nonphonological language skills relating to different patterns of reading behavior. This framework also provides a useful basis for identifying children with poor reading comprehension, and for planning appropriately targeted interventions.

Eye-movement patterns are associated with communicative competence in autistic spectrum disorders

BACKGROUND Investigations using eye-tracking have reported reduced fixations to salient social cues such as eyes when participants with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) view social scenes. However, these studies have not distinguished different cognitive phenotypes. METHODS The eye-movements of 28 teenagers with ASD and 18 typically developing peers were recorded as they watched videos of peers interacting in familiar situations. Within ASD, we contrasted the viewing patterns of those with and without language impairments. The proportion of time spent viewing eyes, mouths and other scene details was calculated, as was latency of first fixation to eyes. Finally, the association between viewing patterns and social-communicative competence was measured. RESULTS Individuals with ASD and age-appropriate language abilities spent significantly less time viewing eyes and were slower to fixate the eyes than typically developing peers. In contrast, there were no differences in viewing patterns between those with language impairments and typically developing peers. Eye-movement patterns were not associated with social outcomes for either language phenotype. However, increased fixations to the mouth were associated with greater communicative competence across the autistic spectrum. CONCLUSIONS Attention to both eyes and mouths is important for language development and communicative competence. Differences in fixation time to eyes may not be sufficient to disrupt social competence in daily interactions. A multiple cognitive deficit model of ASD, incorporating different language phenotypes, is advocated.

Neurocognitive outcomes of individuals with a sex chromosome trisomy: XXX, XYY, or XXY: a systematic review†

Aim  To review systematically the neurodevelopmental characteristics of individuals with sex chromosome trisomies (SCTs).

Do individuals with autism process words in context? Evidence from language-mediated eye-movements

It is widely argued that people with autism have difficulty processing ambiguous linguistic information in context. To investigate this claim, we recorded the eye-movements of 24 adolescents with autism spectrum disorder and 24 language-matched peers as they monitored spoken sentences for words corresponding to objects on a computer display. Following a target word, participants looked more at a competitor object sharing the same onset than at phonologically unrelated objects. This effect was, however, mediated by the sentence context such that participants looked less at the phonological competitor if it was semantically incongruous with the preceding verb. Contrary to predictions, the two groups evidenced similar effects of context on eye-movements. Instead, across both groups, the effect of sentence context was reduced in individuals with relatively poor language skills. Implications for the weak central coherence account of autism are discussed.

Autism, language and communication in children with sex chromosome trisomies

Purpose Sex chromosome trisomies (SCTs) are found on amniocentesis in 2.3–3.7 per 1000 same-sex births, yet there is a limited database on which to base a prognosis. Autism has been described in postnatally diagnosed cases of Klinefelter syndrome (XXY karyotype), but the prevalence in non-referred samples, and in other trisomies, is unclear. The authors recruited the largest sample including all three SCTs to be reported to date, including children identified on prenatal screening, to clarify this issue. Design Parents of children with a SCT were recruited either via prenatal screening or via a parental support group, to give a sample of 58 XXX, 19 XXY and 58 XYY cases. Parents were interviewed using the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales and completed questionnaires about the communicative development of children with SCTs and their siblings (42 brothers and 26 sisters). Results Rates of language and communication problems were high in all three trisomies. Diagnoses of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) were found in 2/19 cases of XXY (11%) and 11/58 XYY (19%). After excluding those with an ASD diagnosis, communicative profiles indicative of mild autistic features were common, although there was wide individual variation. Conclusions Autistic features have not previously been remarked upon in studies of non-referred samples with SCTs, yet the rate is substantially above population levels in this sample, even when attention is restricted to early-identified cases. The authors hypothesise that X-linked and Y-linked neuroligins may play a significant role in the aetiology of communication impairments and ASD.