This study explores the reliability and validity of a NWR task in a large cohort of 387 TD Greek-speaking children aged 7–13 years attending elementary (Grades 2–6) and secondary school (Grade 1), divided into six age groups. Further, the relationship between NWR and reading fluency skills as well as the predictive value of the NWR on reading fluency skills in TD children are examined. To investigate the external reliability of the NWR task, test-retest reliability was performed, and excellent test-retest reliability was found. Internal reliability was explored with Cronbach’s alpha coefficient and good reliability was found. To explore convergent validity, correlation analysis between NWR and reading fluency was conducted and significant and strong correlations were found for all age groups excepted 2 (ages 9-10 and 12-13). To examine predictive validity, regression analysis was conducted between these two variables and showed that performance on NWR contributed significantly to reading fluency skills, suggesting that NWR skills are a good predictor of reading skills. Finally, it was explored whether the relevant scores increase as a function of age and found significant differences between groups that differed in 2 years or more, while this difference was no longer significant after 10 years. This finding suggests that phonological STM increases in capacity along with age, but only until the age of 10, where it seems to reach a ceiling. In addition, linear regression analysis showed that age contributed significantly to performance on NWR test. To sum up, the present study provides normative data of a NWR test for a wide age range, which does not exist in the Greek language (particularly for ages over 9 years) and it can be concluded that the present NWR test can be successfully used as a reliable and valid measure of phonological STM in the age range that was examined in this study.

The focus of the present paper is twofold; the first objective is to examine how children with dyslexia (henceforward DYS children) and typically developing children (henceforward TD children) performed in Greek (first language; L1) compared to English (second language; L2) in reading, phonological awareness (PA), rapid automatized naming (RAN), working memory (WM), and short-term memory (STM) tasks. Our second goal is to investigate DYS children’s performance compared to that of TD children in the L1 and L2 domains mentioned above. Thirty-two (DYS = 16; TD = 16) school-aged children (9;7–11;9 years old; M_age = 130.41), basic users of English (level ranging from A1 to A2), carried out a battery test in L1 and L2, respectively, including reading, PA, STM, and WM tasks. More specifically, the tasks were the following: word and nonword decoding, reading accuracy and reading fluency, word and nonword reading per minute, PA, RAN, nonword repetition, as well as forward, backward, and digit span sequencing. This is a work-in-progress study, and preliminary results reveal that DYS students exhibit important reading and memory deficits in both languages. The data analysis indicated that DYS children have particular difficulties and statistically significant differences in L1 and L2 compared to TD in all tasks. In conclusion, this is the first study, at least in Greek, which assesses both reading and memory skills of DYS children in L2. The results reveal deficits in both languages, and the overall findings contribute to theories on the transfer of difficulties of linguistic skills between L1 and L2, while memory scores also underline this co-occurrence. Future implications of this study include a combination of reading and cognitive activities in the teaching methods of English teachers to improve DYS children’s overall performance in learning English as L2.

Early identification of language and literacy disorders (LLDs) in multilingual children remains a challenge in linguistically diverse educational systems shaped by ongoing migration. In many contexts, including Greece and Cyprus, where LLDs have been poorly investigated, teachers lack screening tools that can reliably distinguish typical multilingual development from possible indicators of LLDs. This study presents the development and preliminary piloting of two teacher-report screening questionnaires for multilingual children aged 4–6 and 6–9 years, designed for use in everyday classroom settings to support early identification and referral. A structured multi-stage procedure guided development. First, items were derived from internationally established clinical markers of multilingual LLDs, covering oral language, phonological awareness, communication, literacy, and related cognitive domains. Second, a scoring framework was created to support consistent, referral-oriented interpretation across languages. Third, the questionnaires were reviewed by specialists in linguistics, education, and speech-language therapy. Fourth, pilot testing with teachers evaluated clarity, feasibility, and classroom relevance. Expert and teacher feedback indicated that the questionnaires are practical and support differentiation between multilinual language differences and potential underlying difficulties. Overall, this study introduces two promising cross-linguistic screening tools for educators in multilingual educational settings, currently undergoing psychometric validation.

The present study explores comparatively the effectiveness of a cognitive (verbal short-term memory (vSTM), verbal working memory (vWM)) and of a linguistic training (10-week duration each) in the diffusion of gains in cognitive abilities (vSTM and vWM) of in school-aged Greek-speaking children with developmental language disorder (DLD). To this purpose, two computerized training programs i.e., a linguistic and a cognitive one, were developed and applied to three groups (A, B, and C) of children with DLD (N = 49, in total). There were three assessments with two vSTM tasks (non-word repetition and forward digit span) and a vWM task (backward digit span): pre-therapeutically (time 1), where no significant between-group differences were found, post-therapeutically I (time 2), and post-therapeutically II (time 3) and two training phases. In phase Ι, group A received meta-syntactic training, whereas group B vSTM/vWM training and group C received no training. In phase ΙΙ, a reversal of treatment was performed for groups A and B: group A received vSTM/vWM while group B meta-syntactic training. Again, group C received no training. Overall, the results indicated a significant performance improvement for the treatment groups and revealed beneficial far-transfer effects as language therapy can affect vSTM and vWM in addition to direct and near transfer effects. In addition, the intervention type order affected performance as follows: first, better performance on the vSTM task (non-word repetition) was shown when the linguistic treatment was delivered first; second, better performance on the vWM in Time 2 and Time 3 was shown by group B, for which the cognitive treatment was delivered first. Concluding, not only intervention type but also intervention type order can affect performance in DLD.

L’article s’intéresse à la spécificité des déficits linguistiques chez les enfants présentant un trouble développemental du langage (TDL) et/ou un trouble spécifique d’apprentissage de la lecture (TSAL). Un premier objectif est de présenter l’état actuel des connaissances sur le rôle du vocabulaire dans le TDL et le TDLE. Celui-ci a un double impact : d’une part, sur la compréhension écrite, d’autre part, sur les procédures d’identification des mots écrits. Un second objectif est de suggérer que certaines différences relevées entre les enfants présentant un TDL ou un TSAL proviennent de choix méthodologiques. C’est ainsi que, dans les études sur le TSAL, le niveau de vocabulaire est une variable de contrôle, supposée ne pas différencier le groupe des enfants avec TSAL de celui des lecteurs typiques, et les évaluations portent alors le plus souvent sur les procédures d’identification des mots écrits. En revanche, c’est le niveau de compréhension du langage oral (du mot, à la phrase et au texte) qui est au centre des études sur les TDL. On peut donc penser que le vocabulaire et la compréhension écrite sont des variables pertinentes qu’il conviendrait de prendre en compte dans la compréhension de ces deux troubles.

This study investigated spelling performance in Greek-speaking adolescents with Developmental Dyslexia (DD–only) and those with Developmental Dyslexia and co-occurring language difficulties (DD+coLD), compared to typically developing (TD) peers, matched on chronological age (CA) and reading age (RA). A total of 98 participants (20 DD–only, 14 DD+coLD, 34 CA, 30 RA) completed measures of fluid reasoning, reading fluency, expressive vocabulary, morphosyntactic skills (production, comprehension), and sentence repetition. A spelling–to–dictation task was also administered, with errors classified into linguistically informed spelling categories. Results revealed distinct spelling profiles for the two dyslexic groups. The DD–only group produced significantly more spelling errors than CA peers, but did not differ significantly from RA peers. In contrast, the DD+coLD group produced significantly more spelling errors overall than both CA and RA peers. Direct comparisons further showed that the DD+coLD group produced significantly more spelling errors than the DD–only group, reflecting differences not only in severity but also in the pattern of errors. These findings demonstrate that co-occurring language difficulties affect spelling performance in adolescence beyond what can be explained by reading level alone and underscore the importance of examining spelling error patterns to distinguish between delayed and more atypical spelling profiles in a transparent yet morphologically rich language such as Greek.