A pilot study assessing listening comprehension and reading comprehension in children with down syndrome: Construct...

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Developmental Psychology
• Special Education

Background:

• Assessing language and literacy in children with Down syndrome (DS) is challenging due to limited psychometric data on common measures.
• Evaluating construct validity across different assessment methods is crucial for identifying optimal tools for individuals with DS and typical development (TD).

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the construct validity of four parallel listening and reading comprehension measures in individuals with DS and TD.
• To determine the optimal assessment methods for language and literacy skills in this population.

Main Methods:

• A pilot study involving 19 individuals with DS and 19 age- and reading-matched TD children.
• Four parallel measures of listening and reading comprehension were administered: non-verbal response, cloze procedure, passage-level with closed questions, and passage-level with open-ended questions.
• Construct validity was assessed using the Multitrait-Multimethod Matrix.

Main Results:

• Strong evidence of construct validity was found for three out of the four measurement methods in both groups.
• The listening and reading comprehension constructs were not found to be separable from a multimethod perspective.
• The study provides initial data on the psychometric properties of different comprehension assessment formats.

Conclusions:

• This research is a foundational step in identifying the most effective listening and reading comprehension assessment methods for individuals with DS.
• The findings can guide the selection of outcome measures in future research on language and literacy in children with DS.