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Purpose: The relationship between phonological awareness, overall language, vocabulary, and nonlinguistic cognitive skills to decoding and reading comprehension was examined for students at 3 stages of literacy development (i.e., early elementary school, middle school, and high school). Students with histories of speech sound disorders (SSD) with and without language impairment (LI) were compared to students without histories of SSD or LI (typical language; TL).
Method: In a cross-sectional design, students ages 7;0 (years;months) to 17;9 completed tests that measured reading, language, and nonlinguistic cognitive skills.
Results: For the TL group, phonological awareness predicted decoding at early elementary school, and overall language predicted reading comprehension at early elementary school and both decoding and reading comprehension at middle school and high school. For the SSD-only group, vocabulary predicted both decoding and reading comprehension at early elementary school, and overall language predicted both decoding and reading comprehension at middle school and decoding at high school. For the SSD and LI group, overall language predicted decoding at all 3 literacy stages and reading comprehension at early elementary school and middle school, and vocabulary predicted reading comprehension at high school.
Conclusion: Although similar skills contribute to reading across the age span, the relative importance of these skills changes with children's literacy stages.
Key Words: reading development, literacy, speech sound disorders, phonological awareness, language
Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) have become in- creasingly involved in the prevention and remediation of reading disorders (RD) due to the link between RD and oral language skills (Catts, Fey, Zhang, & Tomblin, 2001; Fallon & Katz, 2011). It is well established that students with language impairment (LI) are at risk for RD (Bishop & Adams, 1990; Raitano, Pennington, Tunick, Boada, & Shriberg, 2004; Snowling, Bishop, & Stothard, 2000). Studies have also suggested that students with speech sound disorders (SSD) are at risk for RD (Foy & Mann, 2012; Lewis, Freebairn, & Taylor, 2000; Peterson, Pennington, Shriberg, & Boada, 2009). However, there is little information concerning the developmental factors that predict reading ability at different ages and the impact of SSD on reading skills at various ages. The purpose of the present study was to determine which linguistic and nonlinguistic cognitive factors are related to reading skills for students with a history of SSD only, stu- dents...