Initial acquisition of mental graphemic representations in children with language impairment

Abstract

The authors examined initial acquisition of mental graphemic representations (MGRs) for a set of pseudowords in children with language impairment (LI). They also determined whether the linguistic properties of the words (i.e., phonotactic and orthotactic probabilities) influenced MGR learning and whether the ability to acquire initial MGRs was related to performance on reading and spelling measures. The authors compared these children's initial acquisition of MGRs to a group of children with typical language (TL) skills.