Debbie Gooch

Royal Holloway, University of London | RHUL · Department of Psychology

Background Language ability predicts academic attainment across the curriculum. Teacher report of language difficulties may therefore help schools identify children that require Special Educational Needs (SEN) provision. Special Educational Needs provision is intended to enable children to reach their academic potential, however the effectiveness o...

Background Centile curves and standard scores are common in epidemiological research. However, standardised norms and centile growth curves for language disorder that reflect the entire UK local school population do not exist. Methods Scores on six language indices assessing receptive and expressive functioning of children were obtained from the S...

The causal role of speed of processing (SOP) in developmental language disorder (DLD) is unclear given that SOP has been implicated in other neurodevelopmental disorders such as attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder. This study investigated associations between SOP, language, and inattention/hyperactivity in a U.K. epidemiological cohort (N = 52...

This study evaluated the claim that auditory processing deficits are a cause of reading and language difficulties. We report a longitudinal study of 245 children at family risk of dyslexia, children with preschool language impairments, and control children. Children with language impairments had poorer frequency-discrimination thresholds than contr...

Scores on six language indices assessing receptive and expressive functioning of children were obtained from the SCALES population survey. Participants were aged between 5 and 9 years. The LMS method of standardisation, which allows for skewed measurements, was used for the construction of language norms. We made use of probability weights that wer...

Background Language development has been characterised by significant individual stability from school entry. However, the extent to which trajectories of language growth vary in children with language disorder as a function of co‐occurring developmental challenges is a question of theoretical import, with implications for service provision. Metho...

Background Rating scales are often used to identify children with potential Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), yet there are frequently discrepancies between informants which may be moderated by child characteristics. The current study asked whether correspondence between parent and teacher ratings on the Strengths and Weakness of ADH...

Appendix S1. Analysis After Excluding Children From Schools Which Only Contributed Data From Monolingual Children

Children learning English as an additional language (EAL) often experience lower academic attainment than monolingual peers. In this study, teachers provided ratings of English language proficiency and social, emotional, and behavioral functioning for 782 children with EAL and 6,485 monolingual children in reception year (ages 4–5). Academic attain...

The ‘automatic letter-sound integration hypothesis’ (Blomert, 2011) proposes that dyslexia results from a failure to fully integrate letters and speech sounds into automated audio-visual objects. We tested this hypothesis in a sample of English-speaking children with dyslexic difficulties (N = 13) and samples of chronological-age-matched (CA; N = 1...

Background: Diagnosis of 'specific' language impairment traditionally required nonverbal IQ to be within normal limits, often resulting in restricted access to clinical services for children with lower NVIQ. Changes to DSM-5 criteria for language disorder removed this NVIQ requirement. This study sought to delineate the impact of varying NVIQ crit...

The development of reading skills is underpinned by oral language abilities: Phonological skills appear to have a causal influence on the development of early word-level literacy skills, and reading-comprehension ability depends, in addition to word-level literacy skills, on broader (semantic and syntactic) language skills. Here, we report a longit...

The developmental relationships between executive functions (EF) and early language skills are unclear. This study explores the longitudinal relationships between children's early EF and language skills in a sample of children with a wide range of language abilities including children at risk of dyslexia. In addition, we investigated whether these...

Background The youngest children in an academic year are reported to be educationally disadvantaged and overrepresented in referrals to clinical services. In this study we investigate for the first time whether these disadvantages are indicative of a mismatch between language competence at school entry and the academic demands of the classroom.Meth...

Background Causal theories of dyslexia suggest that it is a heritable disorder, which is the outcome of multiple risk factors. However, whether early screening for dyslexia is viable is not yet known.Methods The study followed children at high risk of dyslexia from preschool through the early primary years assessing them from age 3 years and 6 mont...

High comorbidity rates between reading disorder (RD) and mathematics disorder (MD) indicate that, although the cognitive core deficits underlying these disorders are distinct, additional domain-general risk factors might be shared between the disorders. Three domain-general cognitive abilities were investigated in children with RD and MD: processin...

High comorbidity rates between reading disorder (RD) and mathematics disorder (MD) indicate that, although the cognitive core deficits underlying these disorders are distinct, additional domain-general risk factors might be shared between the disorders. Three domain-general cognitive abilities were investigated in children with RD and MD: processin...

Comorbidity among developmental disorders such as dyslexia, language impairment, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and developmental coordination disorder is common. This study explores comorbid weaknesses in preschool children at family risk of dyslexia with and without language impairment and considers the role that comorbidity plays in de...

Children at family risk of dyslexia have been reported to show phonological deficits as well as broader language delays in the preschool years. The preschool language skills of 112 children at family risk of dyslexia (FR) at ages 3½ and 4½ were compared with those of children with SLI and typically developing (TD) controls. Children at FR showed tw...

Background: Difficulty in controlling attention can lead to mental fatigue in the healthy population. We identified one trial reporting a benefit in patients' attention using a homeopathic formula preparation. One component of the preparation was potassium phosphate, widely available off the shelf as Kali phos 6x for cognitive problems. The aim of...

Reaction time (RT) variability on a Stop Signal task was examined among children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms and/or dyslexia in comparison to typically developing (TD) controls. Children's go-trial RTs were analyzed using a novel ex-Gaussian method. Children with ADHD symptoms had increased variability in the fast...

Deficits in time perception (the ability to judge the duration of time intervals) have been found in children with both attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and dyslexia. This paper investigates time perception, phonological skills and executive functions in children with dyslexia and/or ADHD symptoms (AS). Children with dyslexia-only (n...

We report two studies examining the relations among three paired-associate learning (PAL) tasks (visual-visual, verbal-verbal, and visual-verbal), phoneme deletion, and single-word and nonword reading ability. Correlations between the PAL tasks and reading were strongest for the visual-verbal task. Path analyses showed that both phoneme deletion an...