Reading and Spelling Intervention in Singaporean Children with Down syndrome

Abstract

It is important for children with Down syndrome to achieve their full potential with regards to literacy skills. This behoves educators, clinicians, researchers, parents, and policy makers to ensure that children with Down syndrome receive suitable intervention. There has been a growing number of literacy intervention studies for children with Down syndrome. However, there is wide variability in the quality of the research that has been conducted. Further investigation concerning efficacious literacy programs in school aged children with Down syndrome is required. In addition, research into the oral reading behaviours of school aged children with Down syndrome and their caregivers during semistructured shared book reading is yet to be reported in the literature. This thesis is comprised of five chapters that aim to address these gaps in the research base. Chapter one provides an overview of Down syndrome in Singapore, the theoretical models of reading aloud and spelling of single words, as well as phonological awareness and its relation to reading and spelling in children with Down syndrome. Chapter one also gives a brief review of literacy intervention programs relating to children with DS, and describes some of the literature on the shared book reading behaviours of preschool children with Down syndrome and typically developing children. Chapter two reports empirical research describing the effectiveness of a structured literacy intervention program called Making Up Lost Time in Literacy (MULTILIT, 2007a). The MULTILIT program was used with a view to improve the phonological awareness, word reading and word spelling skills of 15 children with Down syndrome over 12 weeks (Study 1). Eight children with Down syndrome (treatment group) were compared with seven suitably matched children with Down syndrome (wait control group). Postintervention, within-participant comparisons for the treatment group showed significant improvements in sound blending and word reading. Between-participant comparisons showed that children in the treatment group made progress in sound blending and word reading compared to the wait control group. As a whole (n =15), significant improvements were seen in phonological awareness (sound isolation, sound blending, sound deletion), word reading, and word spelling following intervention. Chapter three reports empirical research examining the shared book reading behaviours of mothers and their children with Down syndrome (Study 2). The three most frequent reading behaviours displayed by children with Down syndrome were real word substitutions, morpheme omissions, and partial or whole word omissions. Mothers’ three most frequent reading behaviours included providing the correct word and print related information, as well as ignoring their child’s reading errors. Additionally, mothers were observed to focus more on reading accuracy rather than comprehension monitoring. Chapter four reports empirical research examining the shared book reading behaviours of five children with Down syndrome before and after the MULTILIT program, at group level and at the individual level (Study 3). At group level, a statistically significant reduction was seen in reading errors and shared book reading fluency improved significantly postintervention. In addition, individual case studies of the children’s text level reading performance are discussed. The final chapter of this thesis discusses the overall findings of these studies. The strengths and limitations of the empirical studies are outlined. The chapter concludes with suggestions for future research. This thesis comprises of three empirical studies (Chapters 2, 3, and 4) which may be submitted as separate manuscripts for publication. Thus, some repetition of the background narrative review is inevitable.