Language and Literacy Development of Children with Williams Syndrome

Children with Williams syndrome, a rare neurodevelopmental disorder caused by deletion of ~25 genes on chromosome 7q11.23, evidence large individual differences in both broad language and reading abilities. Nevertheless, as a group, children with this syndrome show a consistent pattern characterized by relative strengths in concrete vocabulary and phonological processing (language skills strongly related to single-word reading) and relative weaknesses in relational concepts, receptive grammar, verbal working memory, comprehension monitoring, and discourse (language skills strongly related to reading comprehension). Children with Williams syndrome who have been taught reading using a systematic phonics approach both decode and comprehend significantly better than children who have been taught using a whole-word approach. Consideration of these patterns in the context of what is known about the reading development of children in the general population provides a strong foundation for facilitating the reading development of children with Williams syndrome.