Syllable Segmentation Skill in Students with Down Syndrome

Background and Objective: One type of metalinguistic skills is phonological awareness. The easiest level of this type of awareness is syllable segmentation, segmentation of words and phrases to their syllables. Individuals with Down syndrome (DS) are impaired in the phonological awareness. Syllable segmentation skill is important in reading, writing and educational performance. Therefore, this article seeks to examine this skill in words with two and three syllables in Persian students with DS.Materials and Methods: Nineteen students with DS (mean age=13.47 year, SD=2.16) were participated in this cross-sectional research. They were 12 girls and seven boys. Ten students were in the second grade, and nine ones were in the third grade. These DS students didn’t have any combined deficits such as stuttering, auditory, visual, clear motor and the other neurological disorders. The task was as pictures of a set of concrete words. The words approved by the speech therapist and linguists. Findings: There was no significant difference between DS students in the second and third grades in segmentation of two syllables words (p=0.930, p> 0.05) and words with three syllables (p=0.931, p> 0.05); However, in the two syllables words, mean scores of the second graders (M= 4.20, SD=0.918) were better than mean scores of the third graders (M=4.00, SD=1.581). In addition, in the three syllables words, mean scores of the second graders (M=3.00, SD=1.247) were better than the third graders (M=2.66, SD=1.732). Furthermore, there was a significant difference in segmentation between the two syllables and three syllables words in the second graders (p=0.016, p<0.05) and third graders’ performance (p=0.042, p<0.05); that is, the students with DS’s performance in segmentation of the two syllables words were better than segmentation of the three syllables words. Moreover, there was no significant difference between boys and girls’ performance in the two syllables (p=0.620, p> 0.05) and three syllables words (p=0.964, p> 0.05); nevertheless, in the two and three syllables words, mean scores of boys were slightly better than girls.Conclusion: Students with DS are impaired in the syllable segmentation of words with more syllables. Therefore, it necessitates that teachers and parents pay more attention to syllable segmentation of these words. Furthermore, students with DS in higher grade need to be taught more in the syllable segmentation of words with more syllables.

کلیدواژه ها:

Down syndrome ، phonological awareness ، syllable segmentation ، Persian language