Oral Reading Skills of Children with Oral Language (Word-Finding) Difficulties

We examined how children with and without oral language (word-finding) difficulties (WFD) perform on oral reading (OR) versus silent reading recognition (SRR) tasks when reading the same words and how lexical factors influenced OR accuracy, error patterns, and nature of miscues. Primary-grade students were administered an experimental reading measure. Words were controlled for lexical factors known to influence oral language, such as frequency, lexical neighborhood, familiarity, and phonotactic probability. For learners with WFD, SRR was superior to OR; lexical factors predicted OR success; WF error-patterns emerged in OR; and miscues were higher in frequency, more familiar, and from denser neighborhoods than targets.