Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Can individuals with Down syndrome acquire alphabetic literacy skills in the absence of phoneme awareness?

Can individuals with Down syndrome acquire alphabetic literacy skills in the absence of phoneme... Two studies investigating the relationship betweenphoneme awareness and word reading ability in Downsyndrome (DS) are reported. The first study included33 Brazilian individuals with DS (mean age = 23years). They all had begun to read and all showedclear signs of phonological recoding skills. Thirty-three normal children (mean age = 7 years),matched with the individuals with DS for readingability, participated as controls. The second studyincluded individuals with DS with a wider range ofreading ability: a group of 46 readers (mean age = 22years) and a group of 47 nonreaders (mean age = 18years). The results question Cossu, Rossini, andMarshall's (1993a) claim that phoneme awareness is notrelated to alphabetic reading acquisition in DS.Although the individuals with DS who participated inthe first study performed rather poorly on a task thatpresupposes the ability to explicitly manipulatephonological representations, they performed quitewell on a task assessing the ability to detectphonemic similarities in words. We suggest that it wasthis ability that enabled them to acquire phonologicalrecoding skills as well as they did, despite theircognitive limitations. The results of the second studywere consistent with this interpretation. The abilityto detect phonemic similarities in wordssignificantly differentiated between the readers andthe nonreaders, even after we controlled forvariations in letter knowledge, intelligence, andchronological age. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Reading and Writing Springer Journals

Can individuals with Down syndrome acquire alphabetic literacy skills in the absence of phoneme awareness?

Reading and Writing , Volume 14 (4) – Oct 3, 2004

Loading next page...
1
 
/lp/springer_journal/can-individuals-with-down-syndrome-acquire-alphabetic-literacy-skills-fX5EAwJsb2

References (22)

Publisher
Springer Journals
Copyright
Copyright © 2001 by Kluwer Academic Publishers
Subject
Linguistics; Language and Literature; Psycholinguistics; Education, general; Neurology; Literacy
ISSN
0922-4777
eISSN
1573-0905
DOI
10.1023/A:1011132124630
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Two studies investigating the relationship betweenphoneme awareness and word reading ability in Downsyndrome (DS) are reported. The first study included33 Brazilian individuals with DS (mean age = 23years). They all had begun to read and all showedclear signs of phonological recoding skills. Thirty-three normal children (mean age = 7 years),matched with the individuals with DS for readingability, participated as controls. The second studyincluded individuals with DS with a wider range ofreading ability: a group of 46 readers (mean age = 22years) and a group of 47 nonreaders (mean age = 18years). The results question Cossu, Rossini, andMarshall's (1993a) claim that phoneme awareness is notrelated to alphabetic reading acquisition in DS.Although the individuals with DS who participated inthe first study performed rather poorly on a task thatpresupposes the ability to explicitly manipulatephonological representations, they performed quitewell on a task assessing the ability to detectphonemic similarities in words. We suggest that it wasthis ability that enabled them to acquire phonologicalrecoding skills as well as they did, despite theircognitive limitations. The results of the second studywere consistent with this interpretation. The abilityto detect phonemic similarities in wordssignificantly differentiated between the readers andthe nonreaders, even after we controlled forvariations in letter knowledge, intelligence, andchronological age.

Journal

Reading and WritingSpringer Journals

Published: Oct 3, 2004

There are no references for this article.