Lipreading Ability and Its Cognitive Correlates in Typically Developing Children and Children With Specific Language Impairment.

Purpose: Lipreading and its cognitive correlates were studied in school-age children with typical language development and delayed language development due to specific language impairment (SLI).

Method: Forty-two children with typical language development and 20 children with SLI were tested by using a word-level lipreading test and an extensive battery of standardized cognitive and linguistic tests.

Results: Children with SLI were poorer lipreaders than their typically developing peers. Good phonological skills were associated with skilled lipreading in both typically developing children and in children with SLI. Lipreading was also found to correlate with several cognitive skills, for example, short-term memory capacity and verbal motor skills.

Conclusions: Speech processing deficits in SLI extend also to the perception of visual speech. Lipreading performance was associated with phonological skills. Poor lipreading in children with SLI may be, thus, related to problems in phonological processing.