Phonological awareness in Urdu language speaking children with down syndrome (DS)

Phonological awareness (PA) is a vital part of literacy development. With dearth of evidence on phonological processing among Urdu-speaking children with down syndrome (DS), current study was conducted to determine the association between response time on rapid naming tasks and phonological awareness performance in children with Down syndrome.

A quasi-experimental study that used cross-sectional design was carried out with 48 children with DS and who are Urdu speaking children (4-12 years) at three rehabilitation centers in Lahore, Pakistan. Rapid automatized naming and phoneme identification tasks were measured with the help of the Urdu Phonological Tele-Assessment (U-PASS) tool. Simple linear regression and partial correlation were analyzed.

The results revealed that the mean response time and phonological awareness had no significant relationship (R2 = 0.006, p = 0.587). The phoneme recognition (M = 9.42) at the beginning was much higher than the phoneme recognition (M = 5.42) at the end. There was moderate positive correlation existing between initial and final phoneme awareness (r = 0.423, p = 0.004) that did not depend on response time.

Processing speed processing and phonological accuracy are two different cognitive constructs in children with DS. The clinicians are encouraged to emphasize the accuracy-based testing and adopt specific interventions addressing the end phoneme awareness.