RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS
REVIEW: Language development
Language and reading
Learning to talk
Exceptional reading among young
people with Down syndrome
Most children and adults with Down
syndrome experience significant difficulty with speech and language skills.
Few achieve clear and fluent speech and
few can express what they wish to communicate effectively because of delays in
learning all the vocabulary and the grammar that they need. In recent years, there
has been a large research effort exploring
all aspects of speech and language development, from birth to adolescent years in
particular.
In a recent paper, Joanne Roberts and
colleagues present a comprehensive
review of this research, covering phonology (speech), semantics (vocabulary),
syntax (grammar) and pragmatics (communication or use of language). Importantly, the authors also consider hearing
and oral motor skills which they rightly
identify as factors which may influence
progress in learning to talk.
This is a very useful review paper, as the
authors both review current knowledge
and identify the research needed next in
each area. The authors provide detailed
advice on interventions that may help,
stressing the need to manage otitis media
and hearing loss, to initiate language
intervention early in development, to
intervene to increase speech intelligibility,
to assess language in different contexts, to
specifically target vocabulary, syntax and
pragmatic skills, to plan to promote the
generalisation of skills learned in therapy
so that they are used in many contexts
and to make full use of signing or other
augmentative communication aids as
needed.
Throughout the paper the authors
remind readers of the wide range of abilities and disabilities that can occur for
children with Down syndrome and the
need to plan for individuals while taking
account of the syndrome-related expectations.
It seems unlikely that a child with Down
syndrome will have age-appropriate reading skills yet show significant delay on
measures of verbal and non-verbal mental
age yet this is the pattern reported by Margriet Groen and colleagues in a detailed
case study of KS aged 8 years. The paper
reports three studies exploring different
facets of the reading skills shown by KS.
In the first study, the abilities of KS are
compared with a group of 13 other children with Down syndrome who are more
able than average and this comparison
establishes that KS is reading exceptionally well for a child with Down syndrome.
She was the best reader and scored significantly ahead of the rest of the children
with Down syndrome on the reading
measures even though she did not score
ahead of them on verbal or non-verbal
mental ability measures.
In the second study, the researchers
explore her phonological skills – that
is her ability to use letter-sound correspondences and rhyme in a variety of
ways – and here her performance is compared with that of typically developing
readers. KS demonstrates age-appropriate skills on the majority of the measures
showing that she is able to decode words
for reading and spelling and does not rely
on visual memory and good ‘sight-word’
skills at this point (though other studies do indicate that children with Down
syndrome rely on ‘sight-word’ skills for
longer i.e. at higher reading ages, than
other children[1]).
In the third study, the reading comprehension abilities of KS are compared with
those of a group of children who have ageappropriate word reading and decoding
skills but some reading comprehension
difficulties. KS shows a similar pattern of
difficulties in that she has age-appropriate reading comprehension skills when
the tasks require literal comprehension
– that is, the answers are all transparent in the text, but has delayed comprehension when the comprehension tasks
require the ability to make inferences not
Sue Buckley
Original research paper
Roberts JE, Price J, Malkin C. Language and communication development in Down syndrome.
Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Research Reviews. 2007;13(1):26-35.
Reading seems to be a strength for many children with Down syndrome. Some are now
achieving age-appropriate reading skills in later childhood. Discovering what has helped
particular individuals progress is important for informing future educational practice.
Down Syndrome Research and Practice • Volume 12 • Issue 1 • July 2007
www.down-syndrome.org/research-practice
RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS
fully apparent in the text but requiring the
reader to draw on world knowledge and
past learning to understand fully. On the
more difficult comprehension task, KS
shows a delay of 13 months in comparison with her word reading ability putting
her score just below the average range for
readers of her age. She also showed a delay
in her performance on a listening comprehension task similar to that shown by
the delayed comprehenders she was being
compared with.
This is a detailed and fascinating paper
as the authors have made full use of the
availability of other data sets to address
the questions and provide the most
detailed published account of the skills
of a reader with Down syndrome. Reading ability is not the only strength that KS
displays. She has exceptional speech skills
(articulation and speech fluency), visual
and verbal short-term memory skills and
uses longer sentences (better expressive
grammar) than most other children with
Down syndrome, even though she does
not score significantly higher than them
on vocabulary or grammar comprehension tasks.
Four questions come to mind when
reading this paper. Firstly, are the gains
in speech clarity, short-term memory and
expressive grammar linked to her reading progress? I have argued in a number
of places that such a link is theoretically
plausible, that is, that teaching reading
will lead to such gains[2-4]. Longitudinal
studies are needed to investigate this possibility.
Secondly, what does a developmental
profile as uneven as this (some abilities
that are typical for age and some very
delayed) tell us about the development of
speech, language, literacy, memory and
general verbal and non-verbal abilities in
the brain – and the possible inter-relationships between them?
Thirdly, what role have specific interventions played in the abilities achieved
by KS? The article notes that her parents
had been teaching her to read from the
age of 3 years and following a programme
which specifically works on speech sound
discrimination and production from that
age and earlier. Here again, longitudinal
research is needed to explore these issues.
Fourthly, how exceptional is KS? This
is an important question for parents and
teachers as they need to know how many
10
other children with Down syndrome might
be as successful with reading if given the
opportunity to learn. Case study reports
of other children with Down syndrome
who read at age-appropriate levels exist
and also suggest gains for speech (e.g. see
REF 3). A number of studies report a range
of reading ages for children with Down
syndrome including some readers achieving reading ages of 14-15 years (see REF 3
for a review). A recent UK study of 49 children with Down syndrome reported four
children reading at age-appropriate levels
and identify that reading is a strength for
the children, that is, they are often reading
better than would be expected for their
mental-age scores[5]. Further research to
find and study more of these ‘exceptional’
readers might go some way to also answering question 3.
Sue Buckley.
Original research paper
Groen MA, Laws G, Nation K, Bishop DVM. A
case of exceptional reading accuracy in a child
with Down syndrome: Underlying skills and the
relation to reading comprehension. Cognitive
Neuropsychology. 2006;23(8):1190-1214.
1. Kay-Raining Bird E, Cleave PL, McConnell LM.
Reading and phonological awareness in children with Down syndrome: a longitudinal study.
American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology.
2000;9:319-330.
2. Buckley SJ, Bird G, Byrne A. The practical and
theoretical significance of teaching literacy skills
to children with Down syndrome. In: Rondal JA,
Perera J, editors, Down Syndrome: Psychological,
psychobiological and socio educational perspectives. London, England: Whurr. 1996; p.119-128.
3. Buckley SJ. Literacy and language. In: Rondal JA,
Buckley S, editors, Speech and language intervention in Down Syndrome. London, UK: Whurr.
2003; p.132-153.
4. Buckley S, Johnson-Glenberg MC. Increasing
literacy learning for individuals with Down
syndrome and fragile X syndrome. In: Warren S,
Fey ME, series editors and Roberts JE, Chapman
RS, Warren SF, volume editors, Communication
and language intervention series: Speech and
language development and intervention in Down
syndrome and fragile X syndrome. Baltimore: Paul
H. Brookes Publishing Co. (In press) 2008; p.233254.
be well read
• specialist focus
• wide readership
• high visibility
• open access online
• pubmed/psycinfo
(research papers only)
we are seeking
contributions from
practitioners, researchers,
families and people with
Down syndrome • practice papers
• research reports
• essays
• research reviews
5. Hulme C, Goetz K, Snowling M, Brigstocke S,
Nash H. Reading development in children with
Down syndrome: relationships with oral language and phonological skills. Paper presented
at: The 4th International Conference on Developmental Issues in Down Syndrome, Portsmouth,
UK. September, 2005.
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