A case of exceptional reading accuracy in a child with Down syndrome: Underlying skills and the relation to reading comprehension

Abstract

We report on a case of a girl with Down syndrome (DS), K.S., whose reading accuracy is exceptional. This ability is associated with robust phonological skills and relative strengths in visual and verbal short-term memory, articulation, and speech fluency. Although her reading comprehension is age appropriate when it comes to the retention of literal information, K.S. has some difficulties in using knowledge-based inferences in reading comprehension. Reading comprehension in that sense is at a level commensurate with her oral language skills. Her reading performance parallels that of children with reading comprehension difficulties who do not have DS. This reading profile is in contrast with claims that individuals with DS mainly use sight-word strategies in reading and shows that the phonological pathway can be highly proficient in a child with DS. However, even in a case such as K.S. where reading accuracy is good, functional literacy is constrained by limited comprehension skills.

The authors would like to thank all the children and their families for participating in the study and in particular K.S. We are also very grateful to Dr. Yvonne Griffiths and Prof. Margaret Snowling for letting us use their data on nonword reading in 8-year-old typically developing children and to Dr. Ifat Yasin for her help with the audiological assessments of the children with Down syndrome. The constructive feedback from the reviewers is highly appreciated. This work was supported by The Wellcome Trust.

Notes

¹ A home visiting educational service for preschool children with additional support needs and their families.

² A communication programme using gestures derived from British Sign Language.

³ Both methods have been shown to be robust to departures from normality in terms of control of Type I and Type II error rates (Crawford & Garthwaite, 2006; Crawford, Garthwaite, Azzalini, Howell, & Laws, 2006; Garthwaite & Crawford, 2004).