Association between accentual prosodic awareness and reading comprehension in children with language development disorder in fourth grade

Abstract

Introduction: developmental language disorder (DLD) is a common problem that affects language levels in different degrees of severity. Reading comprehension (CL) is a fundamental skill that is affected in children with DLD. Accentual prosodic awareness (CPA) is a complex metaphonological skill that is related to CL. However, the association between CPA and CL in children with DLD at school has not been widely studied. Method: a quantitative, non-experimental, transactional and correlational study was carried out that evaluated the variables CL, CPA and TDL in 55 Chilean children who were in fourth grade. The LECTUM test was used to evaluate CL and adaptations of the lexical and metric accent tests to Chilean Spanish were used to evaluate CPA. Results: the results showed a significant association between CPA and CL in children with DLD. Children with DLD presented poor performance compared to normotypical children in the lexical and metric CPA tasks. Conclusions: the study found an association between accentual prosodic awareness and reading comprehension in children with language development disorder in fourth grade. These results suggest that CPA may be an important predictor of CL in children with DLD and that its assessment may be useful to identify children who need additional support in reading development.