Phonological awareness training and reading gains in a child with Williams Syndrome: a case report

Solange De Freitas Branco Lima,Luiz Renato Rodrigues Carreiro,Alessandra Gotuzo Seabra,Daniela Soares Gonzales Faria,Tally L Talfa,Maria Cristina Triguero Veloz Teixeira

doi:10.1590/1982-021620182069718

Solange De Freitas Branco Lima, Luiz Renato Rodrigues Carreiro + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1590/1982-021620182069718

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Abstract

ABSTRACT Williams syndrome is a neurodevelopmental disorder with different manifestations caused by a heterozygous segmental deletion of 1.55-1.83Mb at chromosomal band 7q11.23. The Williams syndrome phenotype is characterized by intellectual deficiency and expressive learning deficits, with impairments in phonological awareness skills. The aim of the study was to verify the effects of an intervention in phonological awareness and grammar teaching, for the acquisition of reading skills and literacy indicators in a child with Williams Syndrome. A case of a 6-year old girl, enrolled in the first year of Elementary School, was reported. The Phonological Awareness Test by Oral Production, the Words and Pseudo-words Reading Competence Test, the Provinha Brasil (reading test), and a Phonological Awareness Literacy Software, were used for phonological awareness and grammar teaching intervention. The study was developed in four phases: pre-intervention assessment, intervention, post-intervention assessment and follow-up, after six months. The results showed progress in phonological awareness skills, mainly in tasks of rhyme, alliteration and syllabic synthesis, as well as reading indicators that were compatible with the school year, following the intervention.

Highlights

At preschool ages, children learn the rules of oral language through their use, without the need of formal instruction to acquire these skills[1]
The results showed that individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) scored lower than control in some phonological awareness skills (PA) skills, such as rhyme detection and syllabic subtraction, as well as grapheme-phoneme conversion, and found minor impairments in lexical reading skills, which depend less on PA14
The child maintained the same number of correct answers (4) in all phases of the study (Table 1)

Summary

Introduction

Children learn the rules of oral language through their use, without the need of formal instruction to acquire these skills[1]. One of the bases for understanding and mastering the alphabetic principle is the establishment of correspondences between letters and sounds, which is one of the facilitating conditions for learning to read and write in an alphabetical orthography[2,3]. These correspondences are part of the domain of phonological awareness skills (PA), that essentially allow the child to reflect on the sound structure of spoken words, and can manipulate their components[4]. In children with intellectual disabilities (ID), the acquisition of PA skills is essential for learning to read and write. Previous studies have shown that, when PA stimuli and teaching of grammatical correspondences are introduced during literacy, children with ID and children with neurotypical development who have severe literacy gaps have shown improvements in skills to discriminate and manipulate speech segments, in the knowledge of letter-sound correspondences and in grapheophonemic decoding, as well as in reading and writing[5,6]

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