Do students with Down syndrome have a specific learning profile for reading?

The present study assessed achieved reading stages of 190 school-aged children with Down syndrome (DS, age 6-20) in Bavaria, one of the most populated federal states in Germany. Teachers described the reading stages of their students in a questionnaire. The achieved stages of reading according to the developmental model of Frith are compared to a sample of 1419 students with intellectual disability (ID) regardless of etiology, but excluding DS; thereafter parallelized ID-groups were compared. Results of the questionnaire addressed to the students' teachers showed that 20.2% of the students with DS do not read at all, 7.6% read at a logographic stage, 49.4% at an alphabetic and 22.8% at an orthographic level. Alongside these findings among the whole sample, correlations are described concerning age, gender, IQ and sociocultural background. The students with DS are then compared to other students with ID with mixed etiologies. This comparison stresses the emphasis on the alphabetic level amongst students with DS. This emphasis also exists when DS and non-DS students are parallelized in groups of ID, thus showing that students with DS and severe ID are ahead in reading, but those with mild ID are behind. Knowledge about specific literacy attainment of students with DS is vital for planning instruction, for creating learning environments, and for formulating future fields of research. Especially students with DS need specific teaching which takes their impaired verbal short term memory into account, such as learning to read in syllables.