Decoding Abilities in Adolescents with Intellectual Disabilities: The Contribution of Cognition, Language, and Home Literacy

Karin Nilsson; Henrik Danielsson; Åsa Elwér; David Messer; Lucy Henry; Stefan Samuelsson

doi:10.5334/joc.191

Decoding Abilities in Adolescents with Intellectual Disabilities: The Contribution of Cognition, Language, and Home Literacy

Journal of Cognition

Volume 4 (2021): Issue 1

By: Karin Nilsson , Henrik Danielsson , Åsa Elwér , David Messer , Lucy Henry and Stefan Samuelsson

Open Access

|Oct 2021

Abstract

Decoding abilities in individuals with intellectual disabilities (ID) are substantially lower than for typical readers. The underlying mechanisms of their poor reading remain uncertain. The aim of this study was to investigate the concurrent predictors of decoding ability in 136 adolescents with non-specific ID, and to evaluate the results in relation to previous findings on typical readers. The study included a broad range of cognitive and language measures as predictors of decoding ability. A LASSO regression analysis identified phonological awareness and rapid automatized naming (RAN) as the most important predictors. The predictors explained 57.73% of the variance in decoding abilities. These variables are similar to the ones found in earlier research on typically developing children, hence supporting our hypothesis of a delayed rather than a different reading profile. These results lend some support to the use of interventions and reading instructions, originally developed for typically developing children, for children and adolescents with non-specific ID.

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Articles in this issue

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/joc.191 | Journal eISSN: 2514-4820

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Language: English

Submitted on: Nov 23, 2017

Accepted on: Sep 21, 2021

Published on: Oct 1, 2021

Published by: Ubiquity Press

In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services

Publication frequency: 1 issue per year

Keywords:

decoding,

intellectual disabilities,

RAN,

phonological awareness

© 2021 Karin Nilsson, Henrik Danielsson, Åsa Elwér, David Messer, Lucy Henry, Stefan Samuelsson, published by Ubiquity Press
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Volume 4 (2021): Issue 1