Spoken Word Learning in Children With Developmental Language Disorder or Dyslexia

Purpose Word learning difficulties have been documented in multiple studies involving children with dyslexia and developmental language disorder (DLD; see also specific language impairment). However, no previous studies have directly contrasted word learning in these two frequently co-occurring disorders. We examined word learning in second-grade students with DLD-only and dyslexia-only as compared to each other, peers with both disorders (DLD + dyslexia), and peers with typical development. We hypothesized that children with dyslexia-only and DLD-only would show differences in word learning due to differences in their core language strengths and weaknesses. Method Children ( = 244) were taught eight novel pseudowords paired with unfamiliar objects. The teaching script included multiple exposures to the phonological form, the pictured object, a verbal semantic description of the object, and spaced retrieval practice opportunities. Word learning was assessed immediately after instruction with tasks requiring recall or recognition of the phonological and semantic information. Results Children with dyslexia-only performed significantly better on existing vocabulary measures than their peers with DLD-only. On experimental word learning measures, children in the dyslexia-only and DLD + dyslexia groups showed significantly poorer performance than typically developing children on all word learning tasks. Children with DLD-only differed significantly from the TD group on a single word learning task assessing verbal semantic recall. Conclusions Overall, results indicated that children with dyslexia display broad word learning difficulties extending beyond the phonological domain; however, this contrasted with their relatively strong performance on measures of existing vocabulary knowledge. More research is needed to understand relations between word learning abilities and overall vocabulary knowledge and how to close vocabulary gaps for children with both disorders. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.14832717

Constraining top squark in R-parity violating SUSY model using existing Tevatron data

Signal of lighter top squark has been looked for using Tevatron data in the di-electron plus di-jet channel. We find that the mass of the lighter top squark when it decays dominantly in the electron plus jet channel, can be ruled out up to 220 GeV at 95% C.L. using di-electron data. In the framework of R-parity breaking SUSY model we exclude relevant R-parity violating couplings for a range of top squark masses and other SUSY parameters. The bounds on R-parity violating couplings are very stringent for the parameter space where lighter top squark turns out to be the next to lightest supersymmetric particle.Comment: 12 pages, 4 Figures, LateX, minor changes, few references added, version to appear in Physical Rev.