The PhonicStick and Language play Can the PhonicStick be used for the purpose of enabling language play and thereby promote phonological awareness for (original) (raw)

Training phonological awareness skills in children with Down syndrome

Research in developmental disabilities, 2003

Increasingly, children with Down syndrome receive literacy instruction based on a phonological awareness philosophy with the expectation of acquiring functional reading skills. Previous research demonstrates that a phonological awareness based reading programme delivers excellent results in terms of literacy acquisition and improvements in speech production for children with speech and language delays. Unfortunately, little research exists to support the effectiveness of this approach for children with Down syndrome. The current research study examined using a phonological awareness based intervention programme with three children with Down syndrome (aged 7;2, 8;4, and 8;10). A multiple baseline across behaviours design was selected. The intervention programme focused on the key skills of alliteration detection, phoneme isolation, spelling of orthographically regular words and rhyme detection. Two tasks (comprehension of passive structures and spatial structures) were selected as control behaviours. Phoneme segmentation and speech intelligibility were selected to investigate generalisation of intervention targets to other related skill areas. The results indicated that the participants improved the phonological awareness skills targeted in the intervention programme. Unfortunately, no generalisation to other areas of phonological awareness was noted. In summary, the results indicate that children with Down syndrome can bene®t from a phonological awareness based approach to literacy. #

Early Phonological Awareness and Reading Skills In Children With Down Syndrome

Down Syndrome Research and Practice, 2003

Increasingly, children with Down syndrome receive literacy instruction with the expectation of acquiring functional reading skills. Unfortunately, little is known about the processes underlying literacy skills in this special population. Phonological awareness contributes to literacy development in typically developing children, however, there is inconclusive evidence about these skills in younger children with Down syndrome. 9 children with Down syndrome (5;6 -8;10 years) participated in this investigation. Due to the paucity of standardised phonological awareness measures for children with special needs, in particular children with Down syndrome, a variety of tasks were adapted from the literature. The assessment battery examined the skills of phonological awareness, literacy, speech production, expressive language, hearing acuity, speech perception, and auditory-visual memory. The results suggest that children with Down syndrome are at risk for reading acquisition difficulties due to reduced phonological awareness skills. These deficits are in addition to delays caused by reduced cognitive skills. Only one of the participants was able to demonstrate rhyme awareness, which may have been due to task effects. Written word recognition ability was correlated with tests of phonemic awareness, and error analysis of the spelling and non-word reading tasks suggested grapheme-phoneme connections deficits. Further research is needed to determine the best methods of assessment and intervention for phonological awareness in children with Down syndrome.

Phonological awareness in children with Down syndrome

Down Syndrome Research and Practice, 2002

Research in the area of phonological awareness has mainly focused on the nature of the relationship between reading ability and awareness of phonemes. However, a recent study of phonological awareness in children with Down syndrome questioned the existence of any necessary relationship . This paper describes a study of phonological awareness in children with Down syndrome with varying levels of reading ability. The sample consisted of 10 male and 7 female children with Down syndrome (aged 9 years 2 months to 14 years 5 months). All children received a battery of tests which consisted of assessments of: 1) phonological awareness, 2) reading and spelling competence, 3) non-word reading and spelling ability, and 4) non-verbal measures. Children with Down syndrome demonstrated measurable levels of phonological awareness. Signifi cant positive correlations were found between phonological awareness and: reading and spelling competence, ability to spell non-words and non-verbal measures.

Development of phonological awareness in Down syndrome: A meta-analysis and empirical study

Developmental Psychology, 2016

Phonological awareness (PA) is the knowledge and understanding of the sound structure of language and is believed to be an important skill for the development of reading. This study explored PA skills in children with Down syndrome and matched typically developing (TD) controls using a dual approach: a meta-analysis of the existing international literature and a longitudinal empirical study. The results from both the meta-analysis and the empirical study showed that the children with Down syndrome initially had weaker PA skills compared to the controls; in particular, the awareness of rhyme was delayed. The longitudinal empirical data indicated that, as a result of formal education, the children with Down syndrome exhibited greater improvement on all PA measures compared with the controls who had not yet entered school. The results reach significance for rhyme awareness. With respect to dimensionality, the performance of the children with Down syndrome loaded on 1 factor, whereas the performance of the younger TD controls was multidimensional. In sum, these findings underline the need for studies that compare interventions designed especially to stimulate development of PA in this group of children and to provide insight into the underlying causes of the developmental profile of children with Down syndrome.

Integrated speech and phonological awareness intervention for pre‐school children with Down syndrome

International Journal of …, 2010

Background: Children with Down syndrome experience difficulty with both spoken and written language acquisition, however controlled intervention studies to improve these difficulties are rare and have typically focused on improving one language domain. Aims: To investigate the effectiveness of an integrated intervention approach on the speech, letter knowledge, and phonological awareness development of ten pre-school children with Down syndrome aged between 4;4 and 5;5. Methods & Procedures: A multiple single-subject design was used to evaluate treatment effectiveness. Baseline and intervention measures for speech and pre-and post-intervention measures for letter knowledge and phonological awareness were compared. The intervention comprised three components: a parent-implemented home programme; centre-based speech -language therapy sessions, and 'Learning through Computer' sessions with a total intervention time of 20 hours over 18 weeks. Letter knowledge and phonological awareness activities were linked to each child's speech targets.

Adapting Phonological Awareness Interventions for Children With Down Syndrome Based on the Behavioral Phenotype: A Promising Approach?

Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, 2015

Many children with Down syndrome demonstrate deficits in phonological awareness, a prerequisite to learning to read in an alphabetic language. The purpose of this study was to determine whether adapting a commercially available phonological awareness program to better align with characteristics associated with the behavioral phenotype of Down syndrome would increase children's learning of phonological awareness, letter sounds, and words. Five children with Down syndrome, ages 6 to 8 years, participated in a multiple baseline across participants single case design experiment in which response to an adapted phonological awareness intervention was compared with response to the nonadapted program. Results indicate a functional relation between the adapted program and phonological awareness. Suggestions for future research and implications for practice are provided.

How do Swedish children handle the PhonicStick and will it affect their phonological awareness?

computing.dundee.ac.uk

Phonological awareness -the ability to identify and manipulate sounds in words -is an important part in early literacy learning. The PhonicStick is a device developed for literacy learning and speech production. In this study, the PhonicStick was tested on Swedish children aged 5 and 6 years to evaluate the use of it and its use for improvement of phonological awareness. A test group of 21 children and a control group of 20 children participated. All children were pre-and post-tested to analyse the possible improvement of phonological awareness. The test group conducted three PhonicStick sessions, including games and five tests. The tests of phonological awareness showed no significant differences between test and control group in pre-and post-test. Four PhonicStick tests showed significant improvements between session 1 and session 3. This shows that the children were able to handle the PhonicStick, including remembering the phonics without visual information and producing words including two or three phonics.

Phonological awareness and visual perceptual processing skills of Maltese children with Down syndrome. How is reading intervention affected

2017

The association between Phonological Awareness (PA) and reading in Down Syndrome (DS) has been questioned throughout the years. Studies have shown that PA does develop. However, several impairments have been identified. Conversely, Visual Perceptual Processing Skills (VPPS) in children with DS has been recognised as being a strength. Children with DS have been described as being visual learners and in consequence children with DS have been exposed primarily to visual methods of reading instruction. This study investigates the development of PA and VPPS in ten Maltese-speaking students with DS, with the aim of identifying the development of these skills in the Maltese language. Ten students with DS were compared to reading age matched typically developing (TD) students. Results showed that there was no overall significant difference between the results of TD students and students with DS in PA. In contrast, the group of students with DS obtained very low scores in VPPS tasks. The results suggest that the visual method of reading instruction should not be used as the only method of reading training with students with DS. Students with DS should be exposed to both a phonological method and a visual method of tuition to develop their reading abilities.

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

Reading and Writing, 2001

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.