The Relationship Between Speech-Language Impairments and Reading Disabilities

A group of children with speech-language impairments was identified in kindergarten and given a battery of speech-language tests and measures of phonological awareness and rapid automatized naming. Subjects were followed in first and second grades and administered tests of written word recognition and reading comprehension. The children with speech-language impairments were found to perform less well on reading tests than a nonimpaired comparison group. Subjects' performance on standardized measures of language ability in kindergarten was observed to be closely related to reading outcome, especially reading comprehension. Measures of phonological awareness and rapid automatized naming, on the other hand, were found to be the best predictors of written word recognition. The implications of these findings for the early identification and remediation of reading disabilities are discussed.

KEY WORDS: reading disabilities, language impairments, phonological awareness, learning disabilities, early identification

Submitted on August 5, 1992
Accepted on March 9, 1993