Maltese readers with Down syndrome: Cognitive and linguistic factors in reading performance

This study examined the word and nonword reading abilities of Maltese participants with Down syndrome and explored how cognitive-linguistic skills and orthographic depth influence decoding performance. We hypothesised that word reading would exceed nonword reading in participants with Down syndrome, with a larger discrepancy in English given its deeper orthography.

A comparative cross-sectional design was used. Fifteen participants with Down sydnrome and 19 typically developing peers, matched on fluid intelligence, completed word and nonword reading assessments in either Maltese or English. Cognitive measures included phonological awareness, visual perceptual processing, verbal short-term memory, receptive vocabulary, and sentence imitation. Non-parametric tests compared groups and within-group analyses examined associations between reading outcomes and subskills.

Preliminary result shows that participants with Down syndrome performed comparably to typical developing peers on word and nonword reading. However, participants with Down syndrome showed significantly better performance on word than nonword reading in both languages, with a larger discrepancy in English than in Maltese. In English, visual-perceptual skills and vocabulary were associated with reading, whereas these links were weaker in the Maltese subgroup.

In this population, orthographic depth shapes decoding patterns. Interventions should emphasise phonological training while accounting for differences between shallow and deep orthographies.