Phonological awareness abilities of Cantonese-speaking children with down syndrome

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.