Embedding key word sign prompts in a shared book reading activity: The impact on communication between children with Down syndrome and their parents

Abstract

Background: Children with Down syndrome have speech and language difficulties that are disproportionate to their overall intellectual ability and relative strengths in the use of gesture. Shared book reading between parents and their children provides an effective context in which language development can be facilitated. However, children with Down syndrome often take a passive role in shared book reading and the use of key word signing (KWS) as a shared book reading technique has never been investigated. Aims: This study aimed to compare children with Down syndrome's participation and use of KWS across two methods of shared book reading -one in which a book had key-word sign prompts embedded (signed condition) and the other in which a book was read as normal (unsigned condition). Measures of child and parent communicative behaviour were taken in each condition to establish if differences emerged. Methods & Procedures:A total of 36 children with Down syndrome (aged between 18 and 61 months) and their mothers took part in the study. Parentchild dyads were videoed at home reading two books, one in a signed and one in an unsigned condition. Child measures included total number of signs produced in each condition and levels of attention and initiation as measured by the Pivotal Behaviour Rating Scale. Parent measures included total number of utterances, mean length of utterance (MLU) in morphemes and vocabulary diversity (VOCD). Parental measures were transcribed using the Codes for Human Analysis Transcripts (CHAT) software and analysed by the Computerised Language Analysis software (CLAN). Contrasts in outcomes between the signed and unsigned conditions were estimated using Poisson and linear mixed-effects models, determined by the type of data.

Shared book reading as a context for language intervention for children with Down syndrome: a mini-review

“…Burgoyne and Cain (2022) reported that children with DS produced significantly more utterances, significantly more words and more different words when parents used question prompts compared to the typical reading condition. Frizelle et al (2022) found that children attempted to sign significantly more in the signed than unsigned condition (see Supplementary Table 1).…”

“…Three non-intervention studies used experimental (Burgoyne and Cain, 2022;Frizelle et al, 2022) or observational (Hilvert et al, 2022) designs to investigate SBR interactions between children with DS and their parents. The number of participants ranged from 8 to 15.…”

“…Burgoyne and Cain (2022) embedded 12 questions within a book to support parents to ask questions about literal and inferential information. Frizelle et al (2022) embedded key-word signing within books to encourage child participation (signed condition) and compared it to reading a book as usual (unsigned condition). Hilvert et al (2022) investigated the differences between maternal and paternal language input during SBR.…”

“…Modification of materials encouraged parents to focus more on extra-textual talk (Burgoyne and Cain, 2022) and increased the number of parent utterances (Frizelle et al, 2022). Hilvert et al (2022) found that mothers produced more utterances and used more descriptive language than fathers, while fathers read significantly more verbatim.…”

Biases in niche construction

“…Nevertheless, there is widespread evidence that when their development is adequately supported individuals with Down syndrome can live happy and meaningful lives (Skotko et al, 2016). In addition, providing them with education in inclusive rather than separate classrooms brings benefits in linguistic and literary skills (van Herwegen et al, 2018), and rich home literacy environments can lead to significant improvements in linguistic development (Ricci, 2011), especially if parents adopt a more interactive reading style (Frizelle et al, 2022).…”