PURPOSE: to check the occurrence of alterations in language skills and writing skills of Phonological Processing (PP) in children with SLI, compare the performance between children with SLI and Typical Language Development on the different abilities of PP; check for association between PP and skills of written language in children with SLI. METHOD: 40 subjects, 20 with SLI (EG) and 20 with TLD (CG) aged between 7 and 10 year old for both genders. To assess the abilities of PP we applied the following tests: proof of non word repetitions to assess phonological working memory (PWM), Rapid Automated Naming test (RAN) for evaluating Lexical Access (LA) and Phonological Abilities Profile for assessing phonological awareness (PA). Writing and reading were evaluated using the subtests present in Test for Análising Reading and Writing Skills (dictation and spontaneous writing, reading text and reading comprehension, respectively). For statistical analysis we used the Chi-Square test, with significance level < 0.05. RESULTS: an association between performance on tests of reading and writing and performance on tests of PP was confirmed. CONCLUSION: there is an association between performance in reading and writing tests of PP which suggests that the difficulties in the abilities referring to PF may explain the difficulties of written language regarding these subjects.
Child Language; Language Development Disorders; Language Development; Child; Employee Performance Appraisal
