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liter acy
Reading interventions for children with Down
syndrome
Kelly Burgoyne
Though many individuals with Down syndrome are now able to achieve useful levels of literacy skills, it is still not
clear how best to support the development of reading skills with this group. Research with typically developing
children has identified successful methods of teaching reading, and recent work has begun to evaluate these
methods for individuals with Down syndrome. The aim of this paper is to review this work, and to highlight areas in
need of further research.
Many children with Down syndrome are
now educated in mainstream classrooms
and have access to the same levels of literacy
teaching as typically-developing children.
As a consequence many individuals
with Down syndrome are now able to
achieve useful levels of literacy skills. A
recent overview of the literature suggests
that children with Down syndrome aged
between 7-14 years typically attain reading
ages of between 5 years, 5 months and 10
years
[1]. There is, however, wide variability
in the level of reading skills that children
with Down syndrome can achieve, with
some children able to develop reading
skills that are in line with, or in advance
of, their chronological age (e.g.
refs 2,3).
Explaining this variability is not straightforward,
as a wide range of factors impact
on reading progress
[1]; nonetheless, effective
literacy instruction is imperative
to enable all children to reach their full
potential and many believe that more can
be done to promote reading development
in children with Down syndrome (e.g.
ref
4
). Given the potential benefits of reading
for the development of speech, language
and memory skills of children with Down
syndrome (see
ref 1) there is a clear need
to explore potential methods of supporting
reading with this group of children.
Research with typically developing children
has identified effective methods of
supporting reading development, and this
work has informed the development of
reading intervention research with children
with Down syndrome. The aim of
this paper is to review some of this work,
and to highlight areas that are in need of
further research.
Learning to read is a complex and challenging
task which requires explicit teaching
and considerable practise to acquire.
To appreciate what is involved in learning
to read, and therefore what needs to be
taught, it is useful to simplify the process.
A useful framework for this is provided
by the Simple View of Reading
[5]. In this
framework, which underlies the National
Strategy Primary Curriculum, effective
reading (reading with meaning) involves
two interacting, but separate, components:
word recognition and language
comprehension. To become effective readers,
children need to develop the skills
involved in both word recognition and
language comprehension; both are necessary
for reading, but neither is sufficient
on its own. Thus, reading cannot occur
unless the child can recognise the printed
word. However, the child must not only
identify the words, but must also understand
the text, for reading to be effective.
Research supports the independence of
word recognition and linguistic comprehension
components (e.g.
refs 6-9), and
clear evidence of the dissociation between
the two abilities is seen in populations
with dyslexia (who have good comprehension
but impaired word reading) and
‘poor comprehenders’ (a group who have
significant difficulties understanding text
despite good word reading skills). The
Simple View of Reading suggests that, to
become effective readers, children need to
be taught both components: how to identify
the words on the page, and how to
understand the texts that they read. This
update will first consider interventions
which target the processes involved in the
development of word recognition skills,
before considering work which has a more
specific focus on comprehension.
Much of the reading research has focused
on the word recognition component.
Work with typically-developing children
has identified phonological awareness
and letter knowledge to be essential for
the development of alphabetic reading.
Phonological awareness is the ability to
reflect on the sound structure of speech
and is assessed by tasks which require
children to separate words into syllables,
identify and produce rhymes, match
words that begin with the same sound,
and to manipulate individual sounds (or
‘phonemes’) in words, for example, by
blending, segmenting and deleting them.
This skill is a strong predictor of reading
in typically-developing children (e.g.
refs 10,11,12
), and a large body of research
evidence points to the efficacy of phonics
teaching in supporting the reading development
of typically-developing children
who have reading difficulties. An early
study
[11] compared four groups of 7-yearold
poor readers: a control group and three
experimental groups who received training
in reading, phonology, or reading and
phonology combined. The results showed
that following the intervention, the group
who received training in both reading
and phonology made the most progress.
Thus, the teaching of phonology is most
effective when it is combined with reading
instruction, and when the links between
sounds and letters are made clear. The
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success of this approach (reading with
phonology) in helping struggling readers
has since been supported by a large body
of research evidence (e.g.
refs 13-17). In line
with this accumulating knowledge base
a recent review of the teaching of early
reading
[18] recommends an integral role
for the teaching of phonics within the
national literacy framework.
Though early research with children
with Down syndrome suggested no relationship
between phonological awareness
and reading ability for this group
[19] later
studies showed that phonological skills
were not absent in this group, though they
are delayed relative to typically-developing
groups and to word reading skills (e.g.
refs 20-23
). A comparison of 12 individuals
with Down syndrome (aged 10-26 years)
with 14 typically-developing children
aged 6-7-years, who were matched for
word reading skills, demonstrated measurable
levels of phonological awareness
skills (initial sound detection, phoneme
deletion and rhyme detection) for the
group with Down syndrome, though they
scored significantly lower on these measures
than the typically-developing group
[22]
. Nonetheless, phonological awareness
skills are correlated with reading for individuals
with Down syndrome (e.g.
refs
22,24
). Thus, though research has yet to
clarify whether phonological awareness
skills are an essential precursor to reading
for children with Down syndrome, or
whether they develop as a consequence of
reading
[22], the evidence does suggest that
phonological awareness skills play a role
in the reading development of this group
of children.
This evidence has led a number of
researchers to investigate the efficacy of
phonological awareness training for supporting
reading development in children
with Down syndrome. In a small-scale
intervention study
[25], three children with
Down syndrome (aged 6 years, 11 months;
8 years, 4 months; and 8 years, 10 months)
received training in phonological awareness
delivered in eight one-hour sessions
over four weeks. Improvements in targeted
phonological awareness skills (alliteration
detection, initial phoneme isolation) were
observed following the intervention, as
were gains in spelling, though it should be
noted that it is difficult to evaluate the size
of the gains as no statistics are reported.
These skills did not, however, generalise
to untrained phonological awareness
tasks (i.e. segmentation), suggesting that
specific skills need to be taught explicitly.
This study also assessed the effects of the
training on speech production: though
some improvements were recorded, these
were minimal and were not apparent in
all participants. It must be noted that this
intervention was over a very short period
and did not explicitly target speech production;
effects of phonological awareness
on speech production may be seen from
longer training studies that include a specific
speech element. There is some support
for this argument from research with
children with speech impairment, which
found improvements in speech production
following 20 hours of phonological
awareness training
[26].
A larger study
[27] evaluated a phonological
intervention programme based on
Jolly Phonics (
[28]; a programme which is
widely used in UK schools to teach lettersounds)
and the reading with phonology
programme developed by Peter Hatcher
and colleagues
[11]. The intervention incorporated
training in phoneme awareness
and letter knowledge, and was adapted
to include a component which worked
on speech production, though the impact
of training on this skill is not reported.
Learning support assistants were trained
to deliver the intervention to individual
children in daily 40-minute sessions. In
this study, 15 children with Down syndrome
(aged 8-14 years) were split into
two groups: Group 1 received the intervention
over eight weeks whilst Group
2 acted as a waiting control group; both
groups then received the intervention for
the following eight weeks. Group 1 showed
larger gains in phoneme awareness, letterknowledge,
word and non-word reading
than the waiting control group, who
began to make progress once they started
the intervention; effect sizes were large
to moderate (Cohen’s
d = 1.27 for letter
knowledge to 0.40 for non-word reading).
Gains were maintained five months after
the intervention had ended. In sum, the
intervention was effective in accelerating
development: Children made more
progress in reading during the intervention
than they did during the year before
the intervention started. Furthermore,
this study suggests that learning support
assistants can be trained to deliver effective
intervention which is tailored to the
needs of individual children.
Other work
[29] suggests that parents can
also deliver effective phonics-based training.
In this study, parents of 7 young children
(aged 4-years) were trained to deliver
an intervention which combined phonological
awareness and letter-knowledge
training, delivered through parent-child
shared reading activities in four 10-minute
sessions each week, for six weeks. When
reading books with their children, parents
were encouraged to bring the child’s attention
to targeted letters and corresponding
sounds within words by stating the letter
name (‘this is the letter S’), describing the
sound it makes (‘it makes the ssss sound’)
and bringing the child’s attention to the
letter visually and orally (‘sss is the first
sound in the word Spot’). Statistically significant
gains in letter knowledge, print
concepts and initial phoneme identity
were reported following the intervention.
Cologon, Cupples and Wyver
[30] compared
two training programmes: a phonological
awareness programme, and a silent
reading or comprehension programme.
Fifteen children with Down syndrome,
aged 2-10-years were allocated to one of
the two training programmes which were
delivered over 10-weeks. The phonological
awareness training emphasised oral
reading, using word reading and blending
tasks. The comprehension or silent
reading tasks included selecting pictures
to match action words and sentences.
There was also some overlap between
the programmes, as both included sentence
completion and oral reading components.
In addition, taking advantage
of the visual strengths of children with
Down syndrome
[1], both programmes
made use of visual aids, such as pictures
and plastic letters, to promote learning.
Both programmes led to significant gains
on measures of phonological awareness,
letter-sound knowledge and word and
passage comprehension. This research
suggests that children with Down syndrome
may make considerable improvements
in phonological awareness and
letter-sound knowledge following periods
of instruction, even when teaching does
not explicitly target those skills. However,
other work which has compared phonological
awareness intervention with other
types of training (i.e. narrative training)
in children with Down syndrome report
greater gains following explicit teaching
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of phonological awareness (e.g., Cleave,
Kay-Raining Bird, Bourassa, Armstrong
& MacIsaac, 2006, cited in
[31]).
The evidence outlined above suggests
that reading instruction, and more specifically,
training phonological awareness
in the context of learning letter-sound
knowledge, is effective for supporting the
development of reading in groups of typically-
developing children, and in children
with Down syndrome. Thus, many
children show strong and lasting gains
on reading measures following phonological
awareness intervention even where
interventions are of short duration. It is
important to note, however, that a minority
of children who receive phonological
awareness intervention fail to respond;
many studies of typically-developing
children and of children with Down syndrome
report wide variation in response
to phonological awareness intervention,
with some children failing to make any
progress, or even showing in a decline
in reading (e.g.
refs 15,27,29,32). Goetz et
al.
[27] report no progress for 2 of the 15
children with Down syndrome who participated
in their intervention, whilst a
further 4 children showed small declines
in reading age over the course of the intervention
period. Similarly, van Bysterveldt
et al.
[29] report significant variability
within the group of children with Down
syndrome, both in terms of initial level of
skill, and in progress made over the course
of the intervention, with some children
making very little or no progress.
Research with typically-developing
children has begun to explore why some
children fail to respond to phonological
awareness intervention. This research
suggests that these children have a similar
profile of more severe deficits in phonological
awareness and letter-sound knowledge
and relatively poor vocabulary skills
[15,32].
It has been argued that oral language, particularly
vocabulary knowledge, supports
the development of phonological awareness
[
33]
as increasing vocabulary knowledge
forces a restructuring of the mental
lexicon at a sub-lexical phonological level.
In this way, developing vocabulary knowledge
is likely to have a facilitative effect on
developing phonological awareness. This
would predict that intervention which
targets oral language skills alongside phonological
awareness skills would be particularly
effective for supporting reading
development for this group of children.
Evidence with typically-developing children
appears to support this prediction.
A recent study
[34] evaluated a programme
of intervention which combined training
in reading and phoneme awareness
[15]
with a programme of rich vocabulary
instruction
[35] with 12 8-year-old children
who had previously failed to respond to a
period of reading intervention. This programme
included work on book-reading,
vocabulary instruction and narrative
skills, combined with phoneme awareness,
letter-knowledge and sight-word
reading. Teaching assistants were trained
to deliver the intervention to individual
children in two daily 15-minute sessions
over a period of nine weeks. The findings
showed that, for this group, a combined
reading and vocabulary training programme
was more effective than a programme
which solely targeted reading.
Significant progress was made in word
reading, letter-sound knowledge, phoneme
segmentation and expressive grammar
over the course of the intervention
(effect sizes ranging from Cohen’s
d = 0.44
to 1.23), with children showing gains in
reading that were three times greater than
gains made before and subsequent to the
intervention.
Research with typically-developing children
therefore suggests that children who
have low levels of vocabulary may be less
able to benefit from phonics training and
that intervention which combines robust
vocabulary teaching with reading instruction
could be more effective for this group
than traditional reading intervention
programmes. Potentially, children with
Down syndrome may also be more likely
to benefit from a combined approach.
Language impairments are common in
children with Down syndrome (see e.g.
ref 4
) and evidence suggests that oral language
skills play a significant role in the
development of reading for this group
[3].
This suggests that instruction which combines
highly-structured phonics training
with oral language skills training might
be highly beneficial to the reading and
language skills of children with Down
syndrome.
The work reviewed above has focused
on developing reading skills through the
word recognition component, mainly by
targeting phonological awareness skills
and letter knowledge. It is clear though
that the most recent developments in
reading intervention work, which include
oral language training as a component to
reading intervention, take a more holistic
view of reading that incorporates processes
involved in supporting language
comprehension, i.e. vocabulary. By including
vocabulary and narrative skills in the
teaching programme, this training has the
potential to impact directly on the development
of comprehension, though this
needs to be evaluated in future studies.
Returning to the
Simple View of Reading[5]
discussed earlier, this framework identifies
language comprehension as the second
essential component involved in reading.
In contrast to research on word reading
and phonological awareness, there is considerably
less research on comprehension
and we know much less about how best to
support the development of this skill. This
paper will first provide a brief summary of
the processes involved in comprehension
and review what we know about the comprehension
skills of children with Down
syndrome, before considering methods by
which comprehension may be supported.
Reading comprehension clearly relies to
some extent on word recognition: children
cannot begin to understand text
unless they can first accurately identify
the printed word. Indeed, poor reading
skills are the cause of some children’s
difficulties with reading comprehension.
However, recognising the word is no
guarantee of comprehension; many more
processes beyond those involved in word
recognition are required to make sense
of text. In line with this, research has
identified a group of children who have
particular difficulties with comprehension,
despite demonstrating good decoding
skills. These children are referred to
in the literature as ‘poor comprehenders’,
and they are typically identified as having
reading comprehension skills that are
at least one year below age-appropriate
reading accuracy skills. The discrepancy
between reading accuracy and comprehension
means that they understand text
at a level significantly below that which
could be expected from their reading
accuracy, signalling a problem with comprehension
that is not caused by reading
accuracy difficulties. Research suggests
that approximately 10% of children of
primary-school age fit the profile of poor
comprehenders
[8].
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Reading comprehension is a multidimensional
skill that involves a number
of processes at several different levels,
any of which may impair comprehension;
components identified as important for
comprehension include language skills
(grammar, semantics and pragmatics),
working memory, background knowledge,
and processes including inferential
processing, and comprehension monitoring
[
36]
. Given that many children with
Down syndrome experience difficulties
with at least two of these components,
namely language
[37] and memory[38], it may
be expected that this group would demonstrate
difficulties with comprehension.
Few studies of reading skill in individuals
with Down syndrome report comprehension
data; consequently the evidence base
is limited. However, the evidence that is
available suggests that reading comprehension
is typically below reading accuracy
for this group (e.g.
refs 2,24,39-43). In
a preliminary report
[39] 10 individuals
with Down syndrome (aged 11-19 years)
were compared with 10 typically developing
children (aged 8-10 years) who were
matched for single-word reading. Though
the groups did not differ in reading ability,
the group with Down syndrome
scored significantly more poorly on a
test of reading comprehension. Reading
comprehension scores in this group were
found to be on average 18 months below
reading accuracy. Similarly, the case study
of an ‘exceptional’ reader with Down syndrome
[
2]
showed that K.S. achieved scores
on a reading comprehension test that were
significantly below the level which would
be expected from her reading accuracy
ability; specifically comprehension was
13 months below reading accuracy. Thus,
many children with Down syndrome
comprehend text at a level which is poorer
than could be expected given their reading
accuracy skills. Discrepancies between
accuracy and comprehension are comparable
to that recorded for poor comprehenders,
suggesting a similar profile
[2].
As noted above, many children with
Down syndrome have weaknesses with
language and memory, both of which are
likely to constrain their ability to understand
text. Indeed, the reading comprehension
difficulties of children with Down
syndrome are associated with difficulties
with language comprehension and wider
language skills including verbal cognitive
ability, receptive vocabulary and
receptive semantic knowledge
[2,39]. This
would suggest that interventions which
target vocabulary knowledge or memory
skills may also support the development
of comprehension. Though research has
explored ways of supporting these skills
in children with Down syndrome (see e.g.
refs 4,44
) there is little research evidence
concerning the impact of this on comprehension;
clearly, this is an area in need
of further research. There is insufficient
space here to discuss research which has
developed and evaluated language and
memory interventions with children with
Down syndrome; this will be addressed in
future research updates.
There is some suggestion that children
with Down syndrome have particular difficulties
with inferential comprehension
[2,39].
Inferencing is the process whereby readers
fill in the gaps left by explicit text information,
and the ability to do this is significantly
related to comprehension
[45-47].
Work with typically-developing children
suggests that less-skilled comprehenders
experience impaired inference making
relative to skilled comprehenders
[46-47].
Nash et al.
[39] suggest that children with
Down syndrome also experience particular
difficulties with inference generation:
though both typically-developing children
and children with Down syndrome
scored lower on questions that required an
inference than on questions that required
a literal understanding of the text, the difference
between the scores on the two question
types was greater for the group with
Down syndrome. Groen et al.
[2] also argue
that children with Down syndrome may
find inferential comprehension particularly
difficult. In their study, K.S. scored
more highly on a test of comprehension
which was argued to test mainly literal
understanding, than on a comprehension
test which also included inferential questions.
Research with typically-developing
children suggests intervention which
targets inferencing skills can be effective
for supporting comprehension
[48-49]. For
example, McGee and Johnson
[49] found
that 3 weeks of inference training led to
comprehension gains of 20-months in
6- to 10-year-old less-skilled comprehenders.
Training in this skill may also
then be effective for children with Down
syndrome. However, further work which
clarifies the nature of comprehension difficulties
in children with Down syndrome
is needed before exploring this kind of
intervention.
Work with typically-developing children
suggests that teaching comprehension
strategies is also effective for supporting
comprehension. Strategies that have
been identified as particularly important
for successful comprehension include
prediction, questioning, clarifying and
summarising
[50]. Readers can be taught
to use comprehension strategies with the
result that understanding and memory
of the text is improved
[51]. Palincsar and
Brown
[52] developed an instructional programme
to teach comprehension strategies
called “Reciprocal Teaching”. This
method makes use of modelling and
scaffolding techniques to teach appropriate
use of strategies and children learn to
apply strategies during group activities
which encourage discussion and dialogue
between participants. This programme
of instruction has been shown to lead to
significant increases in comprehension
for different populations of students
[52-55].
Recent work with adults with mild intellectual
disability
[56] suggests that direct
teaching of strategies to individual children
is as effective as the traditional
reciprocal teaching format (working with
groups) for supporting comprehension.
The impact of comprehension strategy
instruction for enhancing reading
comprehension has been evaluated for 6
young adults with Down syndrome (aged
18-25-years)
[58]. The intervention was
delivered over 15 weeks in weekly sessions
of 15-30 minutes duration. Participants
attended in pairs for the first 12 weeks at
which point training was tailored to individual
student’s needs. This study focused
on three key strategies: accessing prior
knowledge and past experiences, prediction
and retelling. Findings are reported
for a single case study: a young man with
Down syndrome named Lewis, aged 19
years and 6 months. Following the intervention,
Lewis demonstrated increased
use of the trained strategies: he was more
able to access relevant prior knowledge
and past experiences and to use this to
understand the text, was better able to
predict the context of text and discuss the
text following reading, and better able to
recall details and retell a text. These types
of strategic processing facilitate comprehension
by enabling the reader to actively
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process the text and to develop a more
detailed and coherent representation of
the text that is supported by personal
experience and background knowledge.
Increases in strategy use were coupled
with significant increases in reading ability:
at the end of the intervention period,
Lewis’s comprehension had increased by
12 months, and accuracy by 10 months.
Thus, teaching comprehension strategies
may be an effective method of supporting
comprehension for individuals with
Down syndrome, though clearly further
work is needed to support this.
A different type of strategy training that
has been investigated is the use of mental
imagery techniques. Imagery may
facilitate comprehension by providing an
alternative (visual) way of representing
information: visual mental images can
help to organise information for retrieval
and support integration of ideas, which
would complement and may reduce the
verbal processing load. Research suggests
that mental imagery training is as effective
as verbally-based reciprocal teaching
methods for improving the reading,
language and memory skills of typicallydeveloping
groups with poor comprehension
[
58]
. Oakhill and Patel[59] carried
out a training study with 9-10-year-old
typically-developing children who were
identified as good and poor comprehenders,
by teaching them to picture stories in
their minds which they were then to use
to answer comprehension questions. The
training led to increased comprehension,
having a greater effect for poor comprehenders
than for the more skilled group,
who presumably are already using this
strategy to aid comprehension. A recent
study
[60] evaluated visual imagery training
as a method of supporting comprehension
in children with specific language impairment
(SLI). In this study, nine children
with SLI aged 9 years, 6 months participated
in five 30-minute training sessions
each week for three weeks. Using picture
cues, children were encouraged to visualise
sentences; as children progressed in the
intervention they gradually shifted from
visualising segmented sentences, through
to individual sentences, before graduating
to 5-sentence stories. The use of picture
cues was gradually reduced over time
so that children were required to create
their own mental images by the end of the
intervention. The intervention was delivered
to children in small groups, in which
they were encouraged to share and discuss
their mental imagery. Significant gains in
comprehension were reported following
the intervention (effect size = 0.608).
Research has yet to evaluate mental
imagery training as a method of supporting
comprehension in children with
Down syndrome; however, evidence that
this group benefit from visual learning
[
1]
suggests that visual imagery training
may play to their strengths. Furthermore,
there is evidence that this group benefit
from mental image strategies to improve
recall
[61]. In this study, 52 individuals with
Down syndrome (aged 7-57 years) were
asked to listen to stories and recall words
and ideas. Recall was best when the stories
were presented along with pictures
representing the main points of the story.
Recall was also significantly better when
participants were given a short training
period in ‘the formation of mental images
in order to learn a story’ than when they
only listened to the stories. This suggests
that this type of strategy is suitable for
individuals with Down syndrome and
may support learning. However further
research is needed to evaluate whether
mental imagery training can be used to
support comprehension specifically in
children with Down syndrome, rather
than simply recall.
In summary, reading intervention work
with typically-developing children has
identified methods of supporting reading
development by targeting the processes
involved in word recognition and
in comprehension. This evidence has
started to inform research with children
with Down syndrome, and there is clear
evidence that some of these methods
are effective for supporting the reading
skills of this group. It must be noted that
there are difficulties interpreting many of
these training studies as they often fail to
include an untreated control group with
which to compare the intervention group,
and are often small scale or report data
from single case studies. There is clearly
a need for further research to evaluate
those methods which appear promising
for supporting reading in children with
Down syndrome, using well-designed and
controlled research methods. In addition,
despite recent advances in knowledge,
there remain significant areas in which
our understanding is lacking, and this is
particularly true of comprehension. More
research is needed to explore the comprehension
skills of children with Down
syndrome, and to evaluate methods of
instruction which may support the development
of this skill. Clearly, there is still a
long way to go.
Kelly Burgoyne is at Down Syndrome Education
International, Portsmouth, Hampshire, UK. email:
kelly.burgoyne@downsed.org
doi: 10.3104/reviews.2128
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