Home and community literacy experiences of individuals with Down syndrome

Abstract

-This exploratory survey was conducted to gain a detailed understanding of the home and community literacy experiences of children, adolescents and adults with Down syndrome. The data were collected from 224 parents/guardians across Canada who were asked to indicate literacy goals and priorities for their children with Down syndrome, the literacy resources they and their children utilised at home and in the community, perceived barriers to their children's literacy attainment, and solutions for alleviating the barriers. The results were analysed according to age when appropriate, in order to better understand the course of literacy development. Overall, the number of respondents who indicated their children with Down syndrome could read and write appeared to be consistent with previously published estimates, including the number reporting advanced reading levels. The wide range of reading and writing materials observed in use at home appeared to be greater than the range of materials actually used by children with Down syndrome. Relatively few of the parents who read storybooks to their children reported asking higher-level questions, suggesting that some parents might benefit from support in this activity. Many respondents reported using the library, and many expressed concerns about the quality and scarcity of literacy programs. The results are discussed with regard to their implications for how parents, caregivers, teachers, and program providers can encourage literacy development in persons with Down syndrome, and suggestions for future research.

Étude de l’écriture chez des adultes porteurs de trisomie 21

“…Au vu des résultats, il apparaît que la qualité des tracés et les temps de production des adultes avec T21 se caractérisent par un niveau d'efficience comparable au groupe d'enfants tout-venant de même AD. Ces données confirment l'existence de compétences sur le plan de la production écrite (Rondal, 1995 ;Trenholm et Mirenda, 2006 ;Turner et Alborz, 2003) et ne plaident pas en faveur d'un déficit spécifique au niveau de la fonction motrice de l'écriture.…”

Narrative Skills of Youth with Down Syndrome: a Comprehensive Literature Review

“…First, inferencing skills were weak even in adolescents and young adults (Boudreau and Chapman 2000;KayRaining Bird et al 2004;Reilly et al 1990). Second, according to a parent survey by Trenholm and Mirenda (2006), parents of children with DS do not often ask higherlevel questions, including inferential ones; while the majority reported reading books to their children, only a quarter asked their child questions about what might happen next, or why something happened. Additionally, Ricci (2011) examined the relationship between parents' book reading practices and the language of their children with DS.…”

“…Children may glean knowledge about these and other features of the narrative genre from exposure to oral narratives, which they can later evoke and extend to understand the texts they read. This point is relevant to children with DS, some of whom learn to read (Trenholm and Mirenda 2006). For non-readers, oral narrative skills will nonetheless impact their narratives arise spontaneously in conversation, they have been elicited in research contexts using verbal prompts (e.g., by telling a story then asking the participant BDid that ever happen to you?^) or photographs of either everyday events or relating to the child's own experience.…”

Home literacy environment of pre‐school children with intellectual disabilities

“…Previous studies indicate that for children with ID, the HLE is different from that of typically developing children (Weikle & Hadadian 2004). These children have fewer literacy materials to interact with than their peers without ID (Marvin 1994; Trenholm & Mirenda 2006), are read to less frequently, and during storybook reading interactions, the main behaviours of their parents are pointing to and/or labelling pictures. Higher‐order reading interactions, like asking what would happen next or to retell a story, are less frequently used during storybook reading (Trenholm & Mirenda 2006).…”

“…The research described above mostly contained groups of children with disabilities that were either highly heterogeneous in both age and disability (cf. Marvin 1994; Weikle & Hadadian 2003) or focused only on a very specific subgroup of children, like children with Down's syndrome (Trenholm & Mirenda 2006). While early literacy skills are important predictors of later reading development (Sénéchal & LeFevre 2002), no research has been carried out on pre‐school children with ID.…”