Contributions of phonological awareness, phonological short-term memory, and rapid automated naming, toward decoding ability in students with mild intellectual disability

Phonological awareness and rapid automatized naming as predictors of early literacy skills among children with mild to borderline intellectual functioning

The aim was to investigate the predicting role of phonological awareness (PA) and rapid automatized naming (RAN) on early literacy skills (e.g., word reading [WR] and spelling [SP]) among children with mild to borderline intellectual functioning. A total of 68 children in inclusive schools in grades 1 and 2, from 12 primary schools from Makka, classified as having intellectual disabilities (ID) of unspecified origin were chosen to participate in this study. Measures of PA and RAN were correlated with measures of WR and SP in children with mild to borderline intellectual functioning. This study advanced knowledge about the predictors (PA and RAN) of early literacy skills (WR and SP) among children with mild to borderline intellectual functioning.

Phonological Awareness and Rapid Automatized Naming: The Mediating Effect of Word Reading and Spelling in Children with Developmental Dyslexia, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and Mild Intellectual Disability

INTRODUCTION

In learning to read, children learn to integrate orthographic, phonological, and semantic codes into highly specified and redundant lexical representations. The aim is to test a proposed model for the relationship between phonological awareness (PA) and rapid automatized naming (RAN) as mediated by word reading (WR) and spelling (SP) in children with developmental dyslexia (DD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and mild intellectual disability (ID).

METHODS

The relation between PA and RAN was found to be mediated by WR and SP in children with DD, ADHD, and mild ID. Three groups of children were included: DD children (N = 70), ADHD children (N = 68), and ID children (N = 69). This is a quantitative correlational, cross-sectional study investigating the strength and direction of relationships among proposed variables.

RESULTS

The relation between PA and RAN was found to be mediated by WR and SP. Based on their correlation analysis, the researcher concluded that there are significant correlations between PA, RAN, WR, and SP. PA correlates positively with RAN and SP. RAN correlates positively with WR and SP.

CONCLUSION

The study extended our knowledge of the relationship between PA and RAN as mediated by WR and SP in children with DD, ADHD, and mild ID. In practice, this is conducive to promote the utilization of "PA" and "RAN" so as to improve the early literacy skills (WR and SP) among children with DD, ADHD, and mild ID.

Decoding Abilities in Adolescents with Intellectual Disabilities: The Contribution of Cognition, Language, and Home Literacy

Decoding abilities in individuals with intellectual disabilities (ID) are substantially lower than for typical readers. The underlying mechanisms of their poor reading remain uncertain. The aim of this study was to investigate the concurrent predictors of decoding ability in 136 adolescents with non-specific ID, and to evaluate the results in relation to previous findings on typical readers. The study included a broad range of cognitive and language measures as predictors of decoding ability. A LASSO regression analysis identified phonological awareness and rapid automatized naming (RAN) as the most important predictors. The predictors explained 57.73% of the variance in decoding abilities. These variables are similar to the ones found in earlier research on typically developing children, hence supporting our hypothesis of a delayed rather than a different reading profile. These results lend some support to the use of interventions and reading instructions, originally developed for typically developing children, for children and adolescents with non-specific ID.

Rapid automatized naming skills of children with intellectual disability

Background

A deficit in Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN), acknowledged to be linked to dyslexia, has rarely been investigated as a potential explanation of the reading difficulties that children with intellectual disability (ID) often face. The existing studies mainly focused on adolescent or adults with ID matched to typically developing (TD) children on verbal mental age, or used a single RAN task.

Aims

The aim of this study was to compare the RAN pattern and skills of children with ID and low reading skills to the ones of TD children with matched reading skills.

Method

30 children with mild to moderate ID with mixed etiology (M = 9.4 years-old) were pair-matched to 30 TD children (M = 4.3 years-old) on phonological awareness- and reading-level. They were all administered color, object, finger, and vowel RAN tasks.

Outcomes and results

Results showed that children with ID had more domain-specific RAN skills and were largely slower in most of the RAN tasks than their younger TD peers.

Conclusions and implications

This suggests that a deficit in RAN should be added to the explanations of their frequent reading difficulties, which might open new remediation possibilities.

Beginning reading interventions for children and adolescents with intellectual disability

BACKGROUND

Historically, students with intellectual disability were not expected to learn to read, and thus were excluded from reading instruction. Over the past decades, societal expectations for this group of learners have changed in that children and adolescents with intellectual disability are now expected to be provided with, and benefit from, literacy instruction. This shift in societal expectations has also led to an increase in research examining effective interventions for increasing beginning reading skills for students with intellectual disability.

OBJECTIVES

To assess the effectiveness of interventions for teaching beginning reading skills to children and adolescents with intellectual disability.

SEARCH METHODS

We searched the following electronic databases up to October 2019: CENTRAL; MEDLINE, including Epub Ahead of Print and In-Process and Other Non-Indexed Citations, Embase, 13 other databases, and two trials registers. We contacted authors of included studies, examined reference lists, and used Google Scholar to search for additional studies.

SELECTION CRITERIA

We included randomized controlled trials (including trials that use quasi-random methods of allocation such as date of birth), involving children and adolescents with intellectual disability (defined as an intelligence quotient (IQ) two standard deviations or more below the population mean) between the ages of 4 and 21 years, that evaluated the efficacy of a beginning reading intervention compared to a control intervention, including no treatment control, wait-list control, treatment as usual, attention control, or alternate non-reading instruction control.

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS

Two review authors independently screened titles and abstracts yielded by the search against the inclusion criteria, and extracted data from each trial using a piloted data extraction form to collect information about the population, intervention, randomization methods, blinding, sample size, outcome measures, follow-up duration, attrition and handling of missing data, and methods of analysis. When data were missing, one review author contacted the study authors to request additional information. Two review authors assessed the risk of bias of each included study and rated the quality of the evidence using the GRADE approach (a systematic method for rating the certainty of evidence in meta-analyses). We conducted random-effect meta-analyses, with inverse-variance weighting to combine effect sizes for each of our primary and secondary outcomes. We presented effect sizes as standardized mean differences (SMD) with 95% confidence intervals (CI).

MAIN RESULTS

We identified seven studies involving 352 children and adolescents with intellectual disabilities that met the inclusion criteria. All studies provided the intervention in school settings. Four studies were conducted in the USA, one in Canada, and two in the UK. Three studies were funded by grants from the US Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences; one study by the Canadian Language and Literacy Research Network and the Nova Scotia Health Research Foundation; and three studies did not indicate a funding source. We identified some concerns with risk of bias, mainly due to the difficulty of blinding of participants and personnel, and the lack of blinding of outcome assessors. Meta-analyses of the data demonstrated small-to-moderate effects of beginning reading interventions delivered to children and adolescents with intellectual disability across four dependent variables. We found medium effect sizes in favor of the beginning reading interventions for the primary outcomes of phonologic awareness (SMD 0.55, 95% CI 0.23 to 0.86; 4 studies, 178 participants; moderate-quality evidence), word reading (SMD 0.54, 95% CI 0.05 to 1.03; 5 studies, 220 participants; moderate-quality evidence), and decoding (SMD 0.40, 95% CI 0.12 to 0.67; 5 studies, 230 participants; low-quality evidence). The studies reported no adverse events. We also found a moderate effect for the secondary outcomes of oral reading fluency (SMD 0.65, 95% CI -0.12 to 1.42; 2 studies, 84 participants; low-quality evidence) and language skills (SMD 0.28, 95% CI 0.03 to 0.54; 3 studies, 222 participants; moderate-quality evidence).

AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS

Results from this review provide evidence that beginning reading interventions that include elements of phonologic awareness, letter sound instruction, and decoding, delivered to children and adolescents with intellectual disability, are associated with small-to-moderate improvements in phonologic awareness, word reading, decoding, expressive and receptive language, and oral reading fluency. These findings are aligned with previously conducted studies that examined the effects of reading interventions for people without intellectual disability.

Phonological Awareness Trajectories: Young Spanish-English and Cantonese-English Bilinguals

This study focused on the phonological awareness skills of 72 Spanish-English and 86 Cantonese-English bilinguals, all enrolled in bilingual and mainstream classrooms in the same schools. Bilinguals were assessed on phonological awareness, decoding, vocabulary, and knowledge of book reading each year from kindergarten until second grade. Individual growth modeling analysis revealed no difference in growth trajectories of English phonological awareness between (a) Spanish-English and Cantonese-English bilinguals and (b) children enrolled in bilingual and mainstream programs. Within-language decoding, vocabulary, and knowledge of book reading were associated with the estimated average initial levels of phonological awareness skills, while only knowledge of book reading had significant effects on the estimated growth trajectory of phonological awareness skills. These findings suggest that young bilinguals with different home languages may have similar growth trajectories in English phonological awareness skills during early elementary school years. The findings have implications for early educational practices.

Phonological processing in students with developmental dyslexia, ADHD and intellectual disability

ABSTRACT Purpose: to compare the performance of students with dyslexia, intellectual disability and ADHD on the skills of phonological awareness, phonological access to the mental lexicon, and phonological working memory. Methods: this is a descriptive, cross sectional and quantitative study. The sample was composed of 32 students, divided into the following groups: G1 - students with dyslexia; G2 - students with ADHD; G3 - students with intellectual disability. The children were assessed on their skills of phonological awareness, phonological working memory, and phonological access to the mental lexicon. A descriptive and inferential analysis was made, using the non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis test. Results: statistically significant differences were observed among the three groups on the phonological working memory skills for pseudowords, forward digit repetition, and backward digit repetition; phonological awareness on syllable level, phoneme level, test total score, and digits subtest of the rapid automatized naming test. Through the descriptive analysis, it was observed that G1 had the best results on all the skills assessed, followed by G2 and G3 Conclusion: differences were found on the skills of phonological working memory and phonological awareness among the groups of students presented with dyslexia, ADHD and intellectual disability.

Sentence Reading Comprehension by Means of Training in Segment-Unit Reading for Japanese Children with Intellectual Disabilities

Children with intellectual disabilities (ID) often have difficulty in sentence reading and comprehension. Previous studies have shown that training in segment-unit reading (SUR) facilitates the acquisition of sentence reading comprehension skills for Japanese students with ID. However, it remains unknown whether SUR training is also effective for individuals unable to read sentences and can generalize to untrained sentences. In this study, we examined the improvement and generalization of sentence reading accuracy and comprehension for two children with ID through SUR training with listening comprehensible sentences. During training, the segments were sequentially presented in their correct spatial locations, and participants read them aloud. After the training, participants' reading accuracy and comprehension improved for both trained and untrained sentences. The results suggest that presenting the components of stimuli sequentially in their correct spatial locations is key to facilitating the development of sentence reading accuracy and comprehension for individuals with ID.

Modeling individual variation in early literacy skills in kindergarten children with intellectual disabilities

In the present study, we investigated (i) to what extent the early literacy skills (phonological awareness, letter knowledge, and word decoding) along with cognitive (nonverbal reasoning, attention, phonological short-term memory, sequential memory, executive functioning) and linguistic (auditory discrimination, rapid naming, articulation, vocabulary) precursor measures of 53 six-year old children with intellectual disabilities (ID) differ from a group of 74 peers with normal language acquisition (NLA) and (ii) whether the individual variation of early literacy skills in the two groups to the same extent can be explained from the precursor measures. Results showed that children with ID scored below the NLA group on all literacy and precursor measures. Structural equation modeling evidenced that in the children with NLA early literacy was directly predicted by phonological awareness, PSTM and vocabulary, with nonverbal reasoning and auditory discrimination also predicting phonological awareness. In children with ID however, the variation in word decoding was predicted by letter knowledge and nonverbal reasoning, whereas letter knowledge was predicted by rapid naming, which on its turn was predicted by attentional skills. It can be concluded phonological awareness plays a differential role in the early literacy skills of children with and without ID. As a consequence, the arrears in phonological awareness in children with ID might put them on hold in gaining proper access to literacy acquisition.

WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS

This paper adds to the theoretical knowledge base on literacy acquisition in a special population, namely children with intellectual disabilities (ID). It addresses factors that influence early literacy learning, which have not been investigated thoroughly in this special and specific group. Furthermore, the children are not tested solely on literacy, but also on cognitive measures that may influence literacy acquisition. Whereas most research in ID focuses on groups with specific syndromes/etiologies, this paper takes a varied group of children with ID into account. The paper also adds to educational insights, since the findings imply that children with ID are able to use phonological pathways in learning to read. Educators could teach these children phonics-based literacy skills tailored to their individual learning needs.

Exploring Phonological Awareness Skills in Children With Intellectual Disability

The phonological awareness skills of 7- to 8-year-old children with intellectual disability (ID) were compared to those of 4- to 5-year-old typically developing children who were matched for early reading skills, vocabulary, and gender. Globally, children with ID displayed a marked weakness in phonological awareness. Syllable blending, syllable segmentation, and first phoneme detection appeared to be preserved. In contrast, children with ID showed a marked weakness in rhyme detection and a slight weakness in phoneme blending. Two school years later, these deficits no longer remained. Marked weaknesses appeared in phoneme segmentation and first/last phoneme detection. The findings suggest that children with ID display an atypical pattern in phonological awareness that changes with age. The implications for practice and research are discussed.

Foundations of reading comprehension in children with intellectual disabilities

BACKGROUND

Knowledge about predictors for reading comprehension in children with intellectual disabilities (ID) is still fragmented.

AIMS

This study compared reading comprehension, word decoding, listening comprehension, and reading related linguistic and cognitive precursor measures in children with mild ID and typically developing controls. Moreover, it was explored how the precursors related to reading achievement.

METHOD AND PROCEDURES

Children with mild ID and typical controls were assessed on reading comprehension, decoding, language comprehension, and linguistic (early literacy skills, vocabulary, grammar) and cognitive (rapid naming, phonological short-term memory, working memory, temporal processing, nonverbal reasoning) precursor measures. It was tested to what extent variations in reading comprehension could be explained from word decoding, listening comprehension and precursor measures.

OUTCOMES AND RESULTS

The ID group scored significantly below typical controls on all measures. Word decoding was at or above first grade level in half the ID group. Reading comprehension in the ID group was related to word decoding, listening comprehension, early literacy skills, and temporal processing.

CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS

The reading comprehension profile of children with mild ID strongly resembles typical early readers. The simple view of reading pertains to children with mild ID, with additional influence of early literacy skills and temporal processing.

Bilingualism and Phonological Awareness: Re-examining Theories of Cross-Language Transfer and Structural Sensitivity

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between bilingualism and phonological awareness by re-evaluating structural sensitivity theory and expanding cross-language transfer theory. The study was conducted with three groups of 1^st and 2^nd graders matched in age, SES and non-verbal IQ: a) monolingual English-speaking children from a general education program, b) native Japanese-speaking children from a Japanese-English two-way immersion bilingual program and c) native English-speaking children from the same bilingual program. An odd-man-out task that took into account the phonological and orthographical contrasts between English and Japanese was developed to assess onset awareness. The results showed that the bilingual children outperformed their monolingual peers in processing onsets that are shared between the two languages, which provided empirical support for the first hypothesis derived from structural sensitivity theory and highlighted the importance of contextual variability in bilingual metalinguistic processing. The second hypothesis derived from structural sensitivity theory, which predicated that bilingual advantage would be more evident in processing novel stimuli, was not confirmed in the present study. The absence of the predicted group difference may be attributed to the disparity in the extent of novelty of the stimuli and the difference in the comparability of participants' degrees of bilingualism between the present study and previous research. Finally, expanding existing research, results from this study showed that cross-language transfer can occur at a phonetic featural level. Future research and theoretical implications were discussed.

The role of phonological awareness and letter-sound knowledge in the reading development of children with intellectual disabilities

Our study investigated if phonological awareness and letter-sound knowledge were predictors of reading progress in children with intellectual disabilities (ID) with unspecified etiology. An academic achievement test was administered to 129 children with mild or moderate ID when they were 6-8 years old, as well as one and two school years later. Findings indicated that phonological awareness and letter-sound knowledge at 6-8 years of age predicted progress in word and non-word reading after one school year and two school years after controlling for IQ, age, expressive vocabulary, spoken language, and type of placement. Phonological awareness and letter-sound knowledge at 6-8 years of age also predicted progress in reading comprehension after one school year and two school years. These findings suggest that training phonological awareness skills combined with explicit phonics instruction is important to foster reading progress in children with mild and moderate ID with unspecified etiology.

Cognitive and linguistic predictors of reading comprehension in children with intellectual disabilities

A considerable number of children with intellectual disabilities (ID) are able to acquire basic word reading skills. However, not much is known about their achievements in more advanced reading comprehension skills. In the present study, a group of 49 children with ID and a control group of 21 typically developing children with word decoding skills in the normal ranges of first grade were compared in lower level (explicit meaning) and higher level (implicit meaning) reading comprehension abilities. Moreover, in the group of children with ID it was examined to what extent their levels of lower level and higher level reading comprehension could be predicted from their linguistic skills (word decoding, vocabulary, language comprehension) and cognitive skill (nonverbal reasoning). It was found that children with ID were weaker than typically developing children in higher level reading comprehension but not in lower level reading comprehension. Children with ID also performed below the control group on nonverbal reasoning and language comprehension. After controlling for nonverbal reasoning, linguistic skills predicted lower level reading comprehension but not higher level reading comprehension. It can be concluded that children with ID who have basic decoding skill do reasonably well on lower level reading comprehension but continue to have problems with higher level reading comprehension.

Effects of naturalistic instruction on phonological awareness skills of children with intellectual and developmental disabilities

This study evaluated the effects of an intervention for teaching phonological awareness skills to kindergarten-age children with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The intervention employed a combined multiple treatment and multiple baseline design, embedded in playtime and implemented under naturally occurring conditions. Six children in a special education kindergarten class were taught syllable segmentation, first sound identification, and phoneme segmenting. Results indicated that all children made gains on each skill. Results are discussed in light of current research on phonological awareness intervention for young children with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Predictors of early literacy skills in children with intellectual disabilities: a clinical perspective

The present study investigated the linguistic and cognitive predictors of early literacy in 17 children with intellectual disabilities (ID) (mean age: 7; 6 years) compared to 24 children with normal language acquisition (NLA) (mean age: 6; 0 years), who were all in the so-called partial alphabetic phase of reading (Ehri, 2005). In each group, children's performances in early literacy skills (phonological awareness, letter knowledge, and word decoding) were assessed, as well as their achievement in linguistic and cognitive measures associated to these skills. The results showed that, notwithstanding the fact that there were no differences in word decoding, children with ID lagged behind on all predictor measures relevant to early literacy skills compared to children with NLA. Moreover, whereas children with NLA showed a regular predictive pathway of early literacy skills, children with ID showed a deviant pattern, in which nonverbal intelligence and rhythmic skills proved to be of major importance. Also letter knowledge appeared to be involved in their early literacy processing. It can be tentatively concluded that in the ID group, children's level of nonverbal intellectual abilities in combination with rhythmic ability proves pivotal in the development of their early literacy skills.