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

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.

Investigating Reading Comprehension in Adolescents with Intellectual Disabilities: Evaluating the Simple View of Reading

Reading comprehension difficulties are common in individuals with intellectual disabilities (ID), but the influences of underlying abilities related to reading comprehension in this group have rarely been investigated. One aim of this study was to investigate the Simple View of Reading as a theoretical framework to describe cognitive and linguistic abilities predicting individual differences in reading comprehension in adolescents with non-specific ID. A second aim was to investigate whether predictors of listening comprehension and reading comprehension suggest that individuals with ID have a delayed pattern of development (copying early grade variance in reading comprehension) or a different pattern of development involving a new or an unusual pattern of cognitive and linguistic predictors. A sample of 136 adolescents with non-specific ID was assessed on reading comprehension, decoding, linguistic, and cognitive measures. The hypotheses were evaluated using structural equation models. The results showed that the Simple View of Reading was not applicable in explaining reading comprehension in this group, however, the concurrent predictors of comprehension (vocabulary and phonological executive-loaded working memory) followed a delayed profile.

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.

An open randomized controlled trial of the effects of linguistic simplification and mediation on the comprehension of "easy read" text by people with intellectual disabilities

BACKGROUND

This trial aimed to measure the effects of extrinsic and intrinsic factors on users' comprehension of health information provided in adapted written "easy read" material.

METHOD

Sixty adults with intellectual disabilities undertook The Easy Read Task, randomly allocated with stratification by reading ability to one of four conditions (with and without simplified language/with and without mediation).

RESULTS

Neither linguistic complexity of the text nor mediation independently or combined made a significant difference to the understanding of information. Post hoc testing revealed that the group who received simplified language with mediation performed significantly better than the group that had complex text with mediation. None of the other differences between the remaining groups were significant.

CONCLUSIONS

Constructing meaning needs to extend beyond a consideration of form as found in "easy read" documents to recognize the role of individual capacity for language processing.

Word reading, vocabulary, and mental health problems in adolescent girls and boys with intellectual and developmental disabilities

Reading difficulties are linked to several disadvantages in the general population. Less is known about correlates of reading difficulties in individuals with intellectual and severe developmental disabilities (IDD). Vocabulary and word reading were assessed in 112 adolescents with IDD, recruited from Special needs comprehensive schools in Sweden (grundsärskolor in Swedish). Proxy-ratings of mental health were collected from teachers and parents for a subset of the participants. Relationships between all measures were investigated. Reading and vocabulary were poorly developed in both groups and significantly associated. While mental health problems were common, there were no significant associations with word reading or with vocabulary knowledge. Thus, the study did not confirm an association between reading difficulties and mental health problems in adolescents with IDD. Still, the frequency of mental health problems and the low reading abilities point to the need for further intervention for adolescents with IDD.

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.

Predictive model for early math skills based on structural equations

Early math skills are determined by higher cognitive processes that are particularly important for acquiring and developing skills during a child's early education. Such processes could be a critical target for identifying students at risk for math learning difficulties. Few studies have considered the use of a structural equation method to rationalize these relations. Participating in this study were 207 preschool students ages 59 to 72 months, 108 boys and 99 girls. Performance with respect to early math skills, early literacy, general intelligence, working memory, and short-term memory was assessed. A structural equation model explaining 64.3% of the variance in early math skills was applied. Early literacy exhibited the highest statistical significance (β = 0.443, p < 0.05), followed by intelligence (β = 0.286, p < 0.05), working memory (β = 0.220, p < 0.05), and short-term memory (β = 0.213, p < 0.05). Correlations between the independent variables were also significant (p < 0.05). According to the results, cognitive variables should be included in remedial intervention programs.

How Achievement Error Patterns of Students With Mild Intellectual Disability Differ From Low IQ and Low Achievement Students Without Diagnoses

This study investigated the differences in error factor scores on the Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement–Third Edition between individuals with mild intellectual disabilities (Mild IDs), those with low achievement scores but average intelligence, and those with low intelligence but without a Mild ID diagnosis. The two control groups were matched with the Mild ID clinical cases on demographic variables including age, gender, and parental education. Results showed significant differences between the groups on several error factors, particularly between the Mild ID group and the two control groups, and no significant differences between all three groups on six error factors. In addition, the two control groups differed significantly on four error factors. Implications for intervention selection, diagnostic considerations, and future directions for achievement test creation are discussed.

Measuring the development of inhibitory control: The challenge of heterotypic continuity

Inhibitory control is thought to demonstrate heterotypic continuity, in other words, continuity in its purpose or function but changes in its behavioral manifestation over time. This creates major methodological challenges for studying the development of inhibitory control in childhood including construct validity, developmental appropriateness and sensitivity of measures, and longitudinal factorial invariance. We meta-analyzed 198 studies using measures of inhibitory control, a key aspect of self-regulation, to estimate age ranges of usefulness for each measure. The inhibitory control measures showed limited age ranges of usefulness owing to ceiling/floor effects. Tasks were useful, on average, for a developmental span of less than 3 years. This suggests that measuring inhibitory control over longer spans of development may require use of different measures at different time points, seeking to measure heterotypic continuity. We suggest ways to study the development of inhibitory control, with overlapping measurement in a structural equation modeling framework and tests of longitudinal factorial or measurement invariance. However, as valuable as this would be for the area, we also point out that establishing longitudinal factorial invariance is neither sufficient nor necessary for examining developmental change. Any study of developmental change should be guided by theory and construct validity, aiming toward a better empirical and theoretical approach to the selection and combination of measures.

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.