http://www.researchonline.mq.edu.au/vital/access/services/Feed ${session.getAttribute("locale")} 5 http://www.researchonline.mq.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/mq:12498 3 page(s) 2011-04-08T07:00:50.540Z ]]> http://www.researchonline.mq.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/mq:4749 42 page(s) 2010-01-27T22:37:59.379Z ]]> http://www.researchonline.mq.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/mq:4896 An intervention study was conducted to investigate whether children with Down syndrome(DS) would benefit from an 'analytic' approach to reading instruction, which encompassed explicit training in phonological awareness. Participants were seven English-speaking children with DS aged 8;6 (years;months) to 11;1, who demonstrated little or nononword-reading ability prior to intervention. The children received weekly instruction (for six weeks) in reading aloud 30 regularly spelt monosyllables (e.g., ten, bake) using an 'analytic' approach, in which words were learned by combining onsets with rimes (four children), or a `whole-word'' approach (three children). Participants' oral reading was assessed pre- and post-intervention using a reading test comprising the 30 trained words and 30 untrained (generalisation) words. Most children (six out of seven) read more training words correctly after intervention than before,with significant improvement shown by four children (two trained analytically, and two trained with whole words). More importantly, reading of generalisation words improved significantly in only three children, all of whom had received analytic training. It was concluded that children with DS benefit from an analytic approach to reading instruction, even though their auditory-verbal memory (assessed using digit span) is poor. 2010-01-27T22:36:22.087Z ]]> http://www.researchonline.mq.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/mq:4939 A series of phonemic awareness (PA) and single-word reading tasks, which did not require spoken responses, was developed for administration to people with complex communication needs. The aims of the study were to (a) determine the construct validity of the PA tasks and (b) investigate the relationship between PA and single-word reading in adults with complex communication needs. Forty adults with physical and/or intellectual disability were administered these tasks and a standardized measure of receptive spoken vocabulary. In assessing construct validity, data from all participants, including those who used speech, were included in a factor analysis, which indicated that the PA tasks loaded onto a single factor. This factor was interpreted to be PA. The relationship between PA and single-word reading in adults with complex communication needs was determined using correlational and multiple regression analyses of data from 34 of the original participants who did not have functional speech skills. These analyses indicated that receptive spoken vocabulary accounted for a significant amount of variance on most tasks. Additional significant variance in performance on the single-word reading tasks was accounted for by performance on the PA tasks, in particular, Nonword Blending and Phoneme Analysis. These results indicate that the tasks developed provide a valid means of assessing PA and single-word reading skills. In addition, the results indicate that adults with complex communication needs demonstrate the same positive association between PA and reading as has been found in other groups of individuals with and without disability. 2010-01-27T22:35:56.587Z ]]> http://www.researchonline.mq.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/mq:5408 The accuracy and reliability of professionals' judgments of the communicative intentionality of acts and behavioral indicators associated with those acts were examined in this study. Twenty special education teachers and 19 speech pathologists were asked to make judgments regarding intentionality and the presence of behavioral indicators for videotaped segments of sequences of behavior for one normally developing child, two children with Down syndrome, and three children with high support needs. Judgments made by these professionals were largely inconsistent with those made by researchers using published criteria, with a tendency to overassign intentionality. Further, judgments were substantially inconsistent both within and between professional groups. Behavioral indicators were more frequently associated with acts judged as intentional by the professionals as compared with acts judged as nonintentional. There was only modest evidence of differentiation of behavioral indicators associated with judgments of intentionality for different types of children. The clinical implications of these findings and directions for future research are suggested. 2010-01-27T22:30:40.336Z ]]>