Abstract:
The primary purpose of the present study was to examine orthographic knowledge in a sample of individuals with Down syndrome (DS) in comparison to typically developing (TD) children matched on word identification ability. Phonological recoding was also compared across groups. A secondary purpose of the study was to estimate literacy rates in DS using parent reports. Results of the parent study revealed that most individuals with DS over the age of 5 years can read words. Results of the child study revealed that individuals with DS performed worse than TD controls on a measure of phonological recoding, but similarly on two measures of orthographic knowledge. Interestingly, the group with DS performed worse on a third measure of orthographic knowledge. The first two orthographic tasks both included real words as stimuli; the third orthographic task used letter patterns, but did not include real words. These results suggest that individuals with DS may have a relative strength in word-specific orthographic knowledge but not in general orthographic knowledge.
