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Dyslexia, Speech and Language A Practitioner’s Handbook Second Edition
Edited by MARGARET J. SNOWLING Department of Psychology, University of York
JOY STACKHOUSE Department of Human Communication Sciences, University of Sheffield
W WHURR PUBLISHERS LONDON AND PHILADELPHIA snowling_00_a_revises.qxd 3/11/05 12:56 PM Page ii snowling_00_a_revises.qxd 3/11/05 12:56 PM Page i
Dyslexia, Speech and Language A Practitioner’s Handbook Second Edition snowling_00_a_revises.qxd 3/11/05 12:56 PM Page ii
In loving memory of our dear friend Nata Goulandris who contributed in so many ways to the field of dyslexia 1940–2005 snowling_00_a_revises.qxd 3/11/05 12:56 PM Page iii
Dyslexia, Speech and Language A Practitioner’s Handbook Second Edition
Edited by MARGARET J. SNOWLING Department of Psychology, University of York
JOY STACKHOUSE Department of Human Communication Sciences, University of Sheffield
W WHURR PUBLISHERS LONDON AND PHILADELPHIA snowling_00_a_revises.qxd 3/11/05 12:56 PM Page iv
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Contents
Preface to the Second Edition vii Preface to the First Edition viii Contributors ix
Chapter 1 Language skills and learning to read: the dyslexia spectrum 1 Margaret J. Snowling
Chapter 2 Speech and spelling difficulties: what to look for 15 Joy Stackhouse
Chapter 3 The dyslexic brain 36 W.A. Lishman
Chapter 4 The prediction and screening of children’s reading difficulties 54 Valerie Muter
Chapter 5 Assessing speech and language skills in the school-age child 74 Hilary Gardner
Chapter 6 Assessing reading and spelling skills 98 Nata K. Goulandris
Chapter 7 Assessing children’s reading comprehension 128 Kate Nation
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Chapter 8 Short-term memory: assessment and intervention 143 Maggie Vance and Jane E. Mitchell
Chapter 9 Phonological awareness and reading intervention 167 Peter J. Hatcher
Chapter 10 Spelling: challenges and strategies for the dyslexic learner and the teacher 198 Claire Jamieson and Sarah Simpson
Chapter 11 Developing handwriting skills 229 Jane Taylor
Chapter 12 Managing the needs of pupils with dyslexia in mainstream classrooms 253 Janet Hatcher
Chapter 13 The assessment and management of psychosocial aspects of reading and language impairments 278 Poppy Nash
Chapter 14 Supporting language and literacy in the early years: interdisciplinary training 302 Jannet A. Wright and Janet Wood
Chapter 15 Current themes and future directions 320 Maggie Snowling and Joy Stackhouse
References 329 Author index 355 Subject index 361 snowling_00_a_revises.qxd 3/11/05 12:56 PM Page vii
Preface to the Second Edition
We were pleased to be asked by Colin Whurr to do a second edition of our book. We wondered first how much had changed and then how we would go about reflecting this. And so we embarked on this new edition focusing on the relationship between spoken and written language difficulties. This second edition continues the theme of linking theory and practice. It is particularly aimed at practitioners in the fields of education, speech and language therapy and psychology. All the original chapters have been updated, and new authors have joined us to reflect current developments. The first part of the book focuses on the nature of spoken and written language difficulties and includes chapters on current research into dyslexia, the dyslexic brain, speech, phonological awareness and spelling problems, and the predictors of literacy difficulties. We then turn to the assessment of speech and language difficulties, reading and spelling skills, and reading comprehension, before moving on to consider techniques for training memory, contemporary approaches to reading intervention, and the teaching of spelling and handwriting skills. Finally, we consider how to manage the needs of people with dyslexia in the mainstream setting, including their psychosocial needs, and the interdisciplinary training of early-years workers. We hope that this book will reach a wide range of practitioners and pro- vide valuable advice to all those engaged in work with children who have problems of reading and language. We are indebted to many colleagues for their input, both those who have made formal contributions to this book and others who, through valuable discussion and joint assessments, have taught us much. We again thank our children, James, Laura and Christopher (now much grown), and our husbands, Charles and Bill, for their continuing support and tolerance!
Maggie Snowling and Joy Stackhouse February 2005
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Preface to the First Edition
This book focuses on the relationship between spoken and written lan- guage difficulties and represents the culmination of our thinking over some 15 years. The book is aimed at the practitioner in the field of chil- dren’s language and learning difficulties and aims to forge links between theoretical advances and clinical issues in this field. Our collaborators on this project include former students and professional colleagues who share the same theoretical framework as ourselves and also the desire to improve the educational opportunities of children who have language difficulties. We are indebted to the many children who have participated in our research, and who have provided us with invaluable insights into the nature and the developmental course of their difficulties. We have enjoyed many valued discussions with too many people to mention by name, but we would particularly like to thank colleagues associated with the Department of Human Communication Science at University College London (formerly the National Hospital’s College of Speech Sciences). Most of all, we thank Charles Hulme and Bill Wells for their inspiration, support and encourage- ment, and our children James, Laura and Christopher for giving us anoth- er perspective on speech, language and literacy development!
Maggie Snowling and Joy Stackhouse
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Contributors
January 1996 Hilary Gardner Department of Human Communication Sciences, University of Sheffield. Nata K. Goulandris Department of Human Communication Science, University College London. Janet Hatcher Dyslexia Institute and University of York. Peter J. Hatcher Department of Psychology, University of York. Claire Jamieson Department of Human Communication Science, University College, London. W.A. Lishman Emeritus Professor of Neuropsychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry, London. Jane E. Mitchell Communication and Learning Skills Centre, Sutton, Surrey. Valerie Muter Consultant Clinical Psychologist, Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, London and Department of Psychology, University of York. Poppy Nash Department of Psychology, University of York. Kate Nation Department of Experimental Psychology, and Fellow of St John’s College, University of Oxford. Sarah Simpson Department of Human Communication Science, University College London. Margaret J. Snowling Department of Psychology, University of York. Joy Stackhouse Department of Human Communication Sciences, University of Sheffield. Jane Taylor Handwriting Consultant, Weymouth, Dorset.
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Maggie Vance Department of Human Communication Science, University College London. Janet Wood Department of Human Communication Science, University College London. Jannet A. Wright Department of Human Communication Science, University College London.
Conventions used in this book
TIE Words in small capitals are target words (or non-words) that a child is being asked to say, read or write. /tai/ Slanting brackets contain phonetic script. “tie” Double speech quotation marks show when an item is spoken by the child or adult.
CHAPTER 1 Language skills and learning to read: the dyslexia spectrum
MARGARET J. SNOWLING
Children vary in the age at which they first start to talk. For many families, late talking might go unnoticed, particularly if the child in question is the first born of the family and no comparisons can be made. Later in the pre- school years, children may be difficult to understand; they might have a large repertoire of their ‘own words’ that others find unintelligible. Such utterances are often endearing, the source of family amusement, and no one worries much because an older sibling can translate. But speech or lan- guage delay can be the first sign of reading difficulties, difficulties that will come to the fore only when the child starts school; a key issue therefore is when is ‘late talking’ a concern, and when is it just part of typical variation? Language is a complex system that requires the coordinated action of four interacting subsystems. Phonology is the system that maps speech sounds on to meanings, and meanings are part of the semantic system. Grammar is concerned with syntax and morphology (the way in which words and word parts are combined to convey different meanings), and pragmatics is concerned with language use. An assumption of our educa- tional system is that by the time children start school, the majority are competent users of their native language. This is a reasonable assump- tion, but those who are not ‘very good with words’ start out at a disadvantage, not only in speaking and listening skills, but also, as this book will demonstrate, in learning to read. Thus, oral language abilities are the foundation for later developing lit- eracy skills. It is, however, important to distinguish speech skills from language abilities when considering literacy development. Learning to read in an alphabetic system, such as English, requires the development of map- pings between speech sounds and letters – the so-called alphabetic principle – and this depends on speech skills. Wider language skills are required to understand the meanings of words and sentences, to integrate these into
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texts and to make inferences that go beyond the printed words. Before examining evidence concerning how language difficulties compromise lit- eracy in dyslexia and related disorders, we begin with a short historical review of the concept of dyslexia.
The concept of dyslexia Arguably, the scientific study of dyslexia first came to prominence in the late 1960s when one of the main issues of debate was whether ‘dyslexia’ was different from plain poor reading. Studies of whole-child populations, notably the epidemiological studies of Rutter and his colleagues, provid- ed data about what differentiated children with specific reading problems (dyslexia) from those who were slow in reading but for whom reading was in line with general cognitive ability (Rutter and Yule, 1975). The results of these studies were not good for proponents of the ‘special’ condition of dyslexia. In fact, there were relatively few differences in aetiology between children with specific reading difficulty and the group they described as generally ‘backward readers’. The group differences that were found included a higher preponderance of males among children with specific reading difficulties and more specific delays and difficulties with speech and language development. On the other side of the coin, the generally backward group showed more hard signs of brain damage, for example cerebral palsy and epilepsy. Important at the time, the two groups differed in the progress they had made at a 2 year follow-up. Contrary to what might have been expected on the basis of their IQ, the children with spe- cific reading difficulties (who had a higher IQ) made less progress in reading than the generally backward readers. This finding suggested that their problems were intransigent, perhaps because of some rather specif- ic cognitive deficit. Note, however, that this differential progress rate has not been replicated in more recent studies (Shaywitz et al., 1992), perhaps because advances in knowledge have led to better interventions (see Snowling, 2000, for a review). Following on from these large-scale studies, the use of the term ‘dyslex- ia’ became something of a taboo in educational circles. Instead, children were described as having specific reading difficulties or specific learning disability if there was a discrepancy between their expected attainment in reading, as predicted by age and IQ, and their actual reading attainment. The use of IQ as part of the definition of ‘dyslexia’ has, however, fallen from favour. First, IQ is not strongly related to reading. Indeed, many chil- dren with a low IQ can read perfectly well even though they may encounter reading comprehension difficulties. Second, and perhaps more important- ly, measures of verbal IQ may underestimate cognitive ability among poor snowling_01_a_revises.qxd 28/10/05 6:00 AM Page 3
Language skills and learning to read: the dyslexia spectrum 3
readers who have mild language impairments. As a result, adherence to the ‘discrepancy definition’ of dyslexia can disadvantage those children with the most severe problems whose apparently low verbal IQ may obscure the ‘specificity’ of the reading problem. Another problem with the discrepancy definition of dyslexia is that it cannot be used to identify younger children who are too young yet to show a discrepancy. In fact, many children who fail to fulfil diagnostic criteria at one age may do so later in the school years (Snowling, Bishop and Stothard, 2000). Moreover, the definition is silent with regard to the ‘risk’ signs for dyslexia, and how to diagnose dyslexia in young people who may have overcome basic literacy difficulties. What is needed to get around these difficulties is a set of positive diagnostic criteria for dyslexia. It is just such criteria that have been sought by psychologists working in the field of reading disabilities.
Cognitive deficits in dyslexia
At about the same time as the first epidemiological studies were being conducted, cognitive psychologists began comparing groups of normal readers and readers with dyslexia using a range of experimental para- digms. In a landmark review, Vellutino (1979) synthesized the extant evidence to propose the verbal deficit hypothesis. According to this hypothe- sis, children with dyslexia are subject to problems centring on the verbal coding of information that create specific problems for learning to read in an alphabetic script. Arguably, since that time, the most widely accepted view of dyslexia has been that it can be considered to be part of the con- tinuum of language disorders. There has, however, been a gradual shift from the verbal deficit hypothesis to a more specific theory: that dyslexia is characterized by phonological processing difficulties (see Vellutino et al., 2004, for an updated review). Children with dyslexia typically have difficulties that primarily affect the phonological domain; the most consistently reported phonological difficulties are limitations of verbal short-term memory and, more direct- ly related to their reading problems, problems with phonological awareness. There is also evidence that children with dyslexia have trou- ble with long-term verbal learning. This problem may account for many classroom difficulties, including problems memorizing the days of the week or the months of the year, mastering multiplication tables and learn- ing a foreign language. In a similar vein, this problem may be responsible for the word-finding difficulties and poor vocabulary development often observed in children with dyslexia. Before proceeding, it is important to note that a number of authors have argued that difficulties with phonological awareness are not a universal