Children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) are at risk for reading problems. Thus, the objective of this study was to assess the scientific evidence available about the reading difficulties of these children.
The systematic review method was used. To answer the research question and design search strategies, the study employed the PRISMA-P – Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic review and Meta-Analysis Protocols checklist. Papers considered eligible were submitted to qualitative analysis by two independent researchers using the Newcastle–Ottawa Scale (NOS). The search retrieved 96,561 articles, bring 29,377 articles from the main databases and 67,184 from the gray literature. After selection, 13 papers were considered eligible.
Children with DLD performed worse in reading comprehension tests when compared to children with typical development; however, considering their individual performance, many do not present difficulties.
Traditionally, it has been described that the vast majority of deaf students do not use or misuse the grammatical aspects of the sentence and, therefore, they have a partial understanding of its meaning. In recent years, given the improvements in both hearing aids and early detection and intervention, numerous studies have highlighted substantial improvements in reading comprehension results achieved by deaf students. This study examines whether reading comprehension strategies in students with hearing loss have changed in the light of scientific and educational developments in recent decades.
The reading comprehension strategies used by both a group of students with hearing loss (N = 29) and a group of hearing students (N = 359) were evaluated. All of these students are in the sixth grade of primary and the second and fourth grades of compulsory secondary education (CSE). The task used was an adaptation to Catalan of the Keyword Strategy Screening Test of the PEALE Battery (Domínguez et al., 2013).
The results showed that deaf students had a lower mastery of syntax, resulting in significantly lower levels of reading comprehension compared to the control group.
The study emphasizes, on one hand, the importance of working on morphosyntactic aspects to improve the reading comprehension of students with deafness. On the other hand, there is a need to identify the specific difficulties that the student presents in order to adjust our intervention as much as possible.
Previous studies have shown lower academic results in school children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) and/or reading difficulties (RD). This paper aims to evaluate whether some of the measures proposed by the inclusive school to enrich the teaching-learning processes have a positive effect on the grades of school children with DLD or RD. Inclusive education measures that foster individualized communication skills are expected to exert a compensatory effect on pupils with difficulties.
The official academic history of 103 students (26 with DLD, 36 with RD, and 41 with typical development; TD) attending 10 schools from Balearic Islands were collected. Inclusive school indicators were evaluated with ACADI's questionnaire.
No significative correlations were found between official grades and school inclusivity scores for the DLD and TD groups, while three indicators of inclusivity showed correlations with the academic results in the RD group. The ANOVA (Group x Inclusivity) on the mean grade of the primary school revealed significant results of the Group factor, a tendency in the Inclusivity factor, but the interaction was non-significant. Grade retention frequency was similar between centers with indicators of high or low inclusivity, and higher in the DLD group compared to the RD and TD groups.
Worse academic results were found in the DLD and RD groups. Inclusion measures appear to partially compensate school children with RD, but not the DLD group. In conclusion, inclusive schools must continue looking for measures to compensate for the learning difficulties of students with DLD.
The NEUROBEL is a short test for the psycholinguistic evaluation of language comprehension and production impairment in older adults. The utility of this instrument has been primarily tested in the Spanish population. The NEUROBEL consists of tasks that assess comprehension through phoneme discrimination tasks, auditory lexical decision, spoken word-picture matching, and sentence comprehension. Additionally, it evaluates language production through repetition tasks, object naming, action naming, and sentence completion. This study aims to investigate the utility of the NEUROBEL in detecting oral language deficits related to cognitive impairment in the Colombian population.
Eighty-two monolingual older adults, aged 59 to 92 years, participated, including 23 men. Of the total sample, 26 participants met the clinical criteria for early Alzheimer's disease, and 25 for mild cognitive impairment, according to the Global Deterioration Scale. The remaining 31 participants served as the control group.
The results showed good internal consistency (Cronbach's Alpha=.81) and a high bivariate Pearson correlation with the MMSE (r=.85; P<.001).
Differences were observed among the three groups in the total scale score. In conclusion, the NEUROBEL proves to be a useful tool for detecting language difficulties in patients with suspected AD (Alzheimer Dessease) and MCI (Mild Cognitive Impairment).
Caregivers’ compliance with speech and language pathologist's (SLP) recommendations plays a valuable role in the dysphagia therapy process. The Caregiver Mealtime and Dysphagia Questionnaire (CMDQ) is a tool for determining why caregivers do not follow SLP recommendations for dysphagia patients. The purpose of this study was to translate, adapt, and validate the CMDQ, which had previously been created for adults with dysphagia, among Greek-Cypriot caregivers of children with feeding and/or swallowing difficulties.
The Pediatric Version of Caregivers’ Mealtime and Dysphagia Questionnaire (P-CMDQ) was administered to 222 parents/caregivers who had children with (N = 122) and without (N = 100) feeding and/or swallowing disorders. For the test–retest reliability measures, the questionnaire was re-administered after two weeks to all participants.
A significant test–retest reliability was found (r = 0.999, p < .001). The P-CMDQ cut-off point was 85.00 [AUC 0.851, p < .001] for the two groups. Principal component analysis (PCA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) results showed the P-CMDQ to be a reliable questionnaire: factor 1 – α = 0.950, factor 2 – α = 0.494, and factor 3 – α = 0.678.
Overall, the P-CMDQ appears to be a reliable tool for the Greek-Cypriot caregivers who have children with feeding and/or swallowing disorders. It can assess the reasons for caregiver compliance with SLP recommendations for children with dysphagia. Hence, the P-CMDQ may be suitable for clinical implementation in the field of dysphagia assessment in children.