Lexical skills in children with developmental dyslexia and developmental language disorder: An overview

Abstract

Children with developmental dyslexia (hereafter DD) and developmental language disorder (hereafter DLD) have deficient lexical skills compared to their typically developing (TD) peers. Verbal fluency tasks are often used to investigate one’s lexical skills by asking them to access and retrieve words from the mental lexicon, in addition to executive function skills. In the Greek language, recent research findings showed that part of the variance of poor performance on verbal fluency tasks was accounted for by poorer oral and written language skills in children with DD and/or DLD compared to their TD peers. This study discusses these findings and the variables involved in the processes and presents directions for interventions considering word learning and executive function skills in children with DD and DLD. It also points out that a single verbal fluency task cannot be a comprehensive assessment of one’s lexical skills, but instead if one performs poorly on a verbal fluency task should undergo a comprehensive language assessment to receive a proper diagnosis in preschool and early school years.