Within the field of Speech Language Pathology, literacy and reading is a topic that often becomes ignored or forgotten when it comes to the assessment and treatment of a child with a language disorder. While the relationship between language development and early literacy skills is complex, it is clear that both the ability to process phonologically and orthographically place a vital role in word identification and therefore reading (Owens, 2024). 

As mentioned in class and throughout the text, the various  aspects of language development are essential for reading and reading comprehension. An example of this is inference in reading. Casey (2022) explains the ability to infer a text refers to the process of gathering information and making a guess on what the information that is not clearly stated could mean. This process could be referred to as “reading between the lines”. The way to make inferences is to recall what we know about the world around us, and use this comprehension to make connections with the world and the text (Casey, 2022). Inference can be gathered by asking questions regarding the character’s perceived emotional response, story predictions, reasoning for occurrences, reasoning for character’s actions, etc (Owens, 2024).  Again, as mentioned in class and in the text, imagine how extremely this task would be for a child with a pragmatic (or social) communication disorder. 

To further the conversation on inferencing, let’s discuss the two types of inferencing that occur; logical inference and reason-based inference. Logical inference is obtained by drawing conclusions from a specific occurrence to a general one (Casey, 2022). For example, concluding that someone is sick from food poisoning after eating raw meat and running to the restroom. Reason-based inference works in an opposing way, starting with a general hypothesis and then making a specific conclusion (Casey, 2022). An example of this would be assuming the rollercoasters at an amusement park are closed for the day due to anticipated storms, knowing that rollercoasters cannot operate in severe weather. 

Casey, M. (2022). Inference in reading comprehension. Bedrocklearning.org. https://bedrocklearning.org/literacy-blogs/inference-in-reading-comprehension/

Owens, R. E. (2024). Language disorders : a functional approach to assessment and intervention in children. Plural Publishing, Inc.

What is the difference? 

Dyslexia can but not always co-exist with developmental disorder. Dyslexia does not have semantical processing deficits, where as those with DLD normally have both phonology and semantic processing issues. Children with just dyslexia can have poor word finding skills, vocabulary, sentence repetition and syntactic comprehension and still score above average on standardized testing (Owens, 2024).  Both are unexpected due to the absents of an intellectual deficits and there is adequate environmental stimulate (Owens, 2025). There are 51% of children with dyslexia who also have DLD and 55% of children DLD have Dyslexia.