Loading...
Please wait, while we are loading the content...
Title Phonological awareness abilities of Cantonese-speakingchildren with down syndrome
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Copyright Year | 2012 |
| Abstract | This study investigated the phonological awareness abilities of Cantonese-speaking children with Down syndrome. The phonological awareness abilities of 16 children with Down syndrome (DS) aged between 7;03 to 14;09, 16 children with intellectual disability of unknown origin (ID) aged between 7;09 to 14;06 and 16 children with normal intelligence (NI) aged between 3;6 to 9;0, matched on mental age and gender, were compared. Phonological awareness abilities were evaluated by eight tasks. The results showed that the children with DS scored lower than the children with NI in all tasks except for phoneme identification task. It was found that phoneme awareness preceded rhyme awareness in the children with DS. It is concluded that although children with DS were able to develop partial phonological awareness, the acquisition pattern was developmentally atypical. The findings offer information for speech therapists to make reasonable expectations and integrate the training of phonological awareness into therapy accordingly. Phonological awareness abilities 3 Introduction Phonological awareness refers to an understanding and manipulation of the sound structure of spoken words (Bernthal, Bankson & Flipsen, 2009). It ranges along a continuum from a more shallow level to a deeper level (Anthony, Lonigan, Driscoll, Philips, & Burgess, 2003). In normal developing children, awareness of larger sound units in words such as syllables and rime is developed before individual phonemes. It is reported that younger children first showed sensitivity to sound patterns across words then demonstrated more awareness in a word's phonological structure (Carroll, Snowling, Hulme, & Stevenson, 2003; Anthony & Francis, 2005). The development of phonological awareness can be influenced by family interactions and home environment (Stadler & McEvoy, 2003). By talking to and engaging in story-telling with adults, children's growth in phonological awareness can be enhanced as they are more aware of the phonological structure of adult's spoken words. Cantonese is monosyllabic and tonal in nature. Each Chinese character is pronounced as a syllable with a fixed grouping of onset, rime and tone. Phonological awareness in Cantonese have been widely studied in typical developing children (Ho & Bryant, 1997), children with language impairment (Wong, 1997), developmental dyslexia (Ho, Law, & Ng, 2000), phonological disorder (So & Dodd, 2007), bilingual Chinese-English children (Jackson, Holm, Dodd, 1998) as well as children with hearing impairment (Tse, 2009). However, little is known about the phonological awareness abilities of Cantonese-speaking Phonological awareness abilities 4 children with Down syndrome (DS). DS is caused by the presence of an extra 21 chromosome. It is the most common chromosomal condition associated with intellectual disability (Carothers, Hecht, & Hook, 1999). The most prominent communication characteristic of this population was reported to be low speech intelligibility (So & Dodd, 1994). According to So & Dodd (1994), speech problems presented in DS were at cognitive-linguistic level. Individuals with DS had difficulties in achieving an accurate phonological representation and generating a correct blueprint for a spoken production. The nature of phonological deficits in children with DS is controversial. Some researchers believed that children with DS showed a developmental but delay pattern of speech acquisition (Smith and Stoel-Gammon, 1983; Bleile & Schwarz, 1984; Kumin, Councill, & Goodman, 1994; Roberts, et al., 2005) while some believed phonological acquisition in children with DS followed a non-developmental pattern (So & Dodd, 1994; Dodd & Thompson, 2001). It was found that children with DS speaking in different languages had poor phonological awareness abilities. Cossu, Rossini, & Marshall (1993)'s study found that Italian children with DS had only partial phonological knowledge. In three different phonemic awareness measures of phoneme deletion, segmentation and blending, the children with DS performed significantly poorer than the children with typical development. Consistent with Cossu, Rossini, & Marshall (1993)'s research, Evans (1994), Fletcher & Phonological awareness abilities 5 Buckley (2002) and Snowling, Hulme, & Mercer (2002) also reported reduced phonological awareness in English-speaking participants with DS. They had lower scores on rhyme recognition and syllable deletion tasks. However, relatively preserved phonological awareness was found in syllable blending, syllable recognition and phoneme recognition, showing that these children were able to acquire partial phonological awareness abilities. There was evidence showing some basic difference in the phonological system of children with DS compared to that of children with normal development. Snowling, Hulme, & Mercer (2002) revealed that children with DS had specific deficit in rime. Children with DS acquired awareness in phoneme before the awareness of rime. This pattern of performance contradicted with the traditional view that larger phonological units were perceived before smaller phonological units (Anthony et al., 2002; Carroll, Snowling, Hulme, & Stevenson, 2003). Phonological awareness was considered as one of the influential variables on early reading achievement (Ehri, et al., 2001, Verucci, Menghini &Vicari, 2006). It is a powerful causal determinant of efficiency of learning to read (Cupples & Iacono, 2000). Deficits in phonological awareness increased the risk of having reading disabilities (Lyon, Shaywitz, & Shaywitz, 2003). The strong relationship between phonological awareness and reading ability has been supported by many studies in different languages including Chinese (Huang and Hanley, 1995; Ho & Bryant, 1997; Chow, McBridge-Chang, & Burgess, 2005). Longitudinal Phonological awareness abilities 6 studies have also showed that Chinese children's performance on phonological awareness tasks was a strong predictor of their later reading development (Kumin, Councill, & Goodman, 1994 and Huang & Hanley, 1997). Investigating the phonological awareness abilities in children with DS in this study allows us to predict their future reading development and make reasonable expectations accordingly. The inclusion of children with intellectual disability of unknown origin aims at determining whether the deficits in phonological awareness in children with DS are effects of intellectual disability or are specific to this syndrome. If children with DS perform significantly poorer in the phonological awareness tasks than those children in ID group, then reduced phonological awareness may be a unique characteristic of the syndrome. It can also provide an insight on whether poor phonological awareness abilities are universal in children with Down syndrome irrespective of the language being acquired. This study proposed to investigate the phonological awareness abilities of children with DS. It was hypothesized that the children with DS would perform poorer than the children with intellectual disability with unknown origin and children with normal intelligence. The two control groups would perform similarly as they were mental-age matched. Methods Participants The study recruited 48 participants whose chronological age ranged from 3;6 to 14;9. They Phonological awareness abilities 7 included 16 children with Down syndrome (DS); 16 children with intellectual disability of unknown origin (ID) and 16 children with normal intelligence (NI). Each child with DS was matched with an ID and a NI participant on the basis of mental age and gender. Table 1 showed the age and gender distribution of the participants. An one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed that the three groups were well matched in terms of mental age (F (2, 45) = 0.35, p = 0.966, NS). All Children with intellectual impairment were recruited from mild grade, mild-to-moderate grade special schools for the intellectually impaired children in Hong Kong. Children with normal intelligence were from local kindergartens and primary schools which use Cantonese as the main teaching medium. None of the children included had other concomitant problems such as hearing loss, visual impairment, physical impairment and Autism Spectrum Disorders, etc. All children were monolingual speakers of Cantonese. Table 1 Age and gender distribution of participants Group n Number of male Number of female Mean mental age (SD) (year; month) (year; month) DS 16 7 9 5;09 (1;8) ID 16 7 9 5;10 (1;7) NI 16 6 10 5;10 (1;7) Notes: DS = Down syndrome; ID = Intellectual disability; NI = Normal intelligence Phonological awareness abilities 8 Procedure Language screening. Language screening was used to ensure the children have adequate language abilities to perform the tasks involved in assessing phonological awareness. The language abilities of the children were assessed informally during the free play session. For expressive language ability, all children recruited were able to name daily objects across different categories and express in at least 3-element utterances. For receptive language, all children were able to comprehend concepts (e.g. colours, comparison and locatives), answer binary choice, 'A-not-A', and 'What' questions and follow 3-element verbal commands involving locatives. Phonological awareness. All participants were assessed individually in a 45-minute session. All sessions were carried out either in a quiet room in the participant's school or in the participant's home. In the first 10 minutes, free play was used to build rapport and assess the participant's language ability. Each participant performed eight informal phonological awareness tasks, adapted and modified from So & Dodd (2007). The phonological awareness tasks were presented randomly to the participants to avoid the effect of task order and participants' fatigue. The length and linguistic complex |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://hub.hku.hk/bitstream/10722/237887/1/FullText.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
