Predictors of early literacy skills in children with intellectual disabilities: a clinical perspective.
For kids with ID, check nonverbal IQ and rhythm first; these—not phonological drills—predict early reading success.
01Research in Context
What this study did
van Tilborg et al. (2014) compared early-literacy building blocks in kids with intellectual disability to kids with normal language.
They looked at phonological awareness, nonverbal IQ, and rhythmic skills.
The study used a quasi-experimental design; no teaching was given, only testing.
What they found
Children with ID scored lower on every early-literacy predictor.
Nonverbal IQ and rhythmic skills, not phonological games, forecasted their future reading.
The team says skip the rhyming drills and target beat-keeping and visual problem solving instead.
How this fits with other research
Bush et al. (2021) reviewed dozens of ABA studies and found strong evidence for teaching communication and pre-academics to the same age-and-diagnosis group.
Their review includes the 2014 data, so the negative scores here do not clash with positive ABA outcomes; they simply flag where to start.
Stancliffe et al. (2007) and Xenitidis et al. (2010) also show phonological working-memory gaps in kids with ID, backing the idea that classic phonics is not the first tool to grab.
Abdool-Ghany et al. (2024) add a twist: preschoolers who already show bidirectional naming pick up literacy without extra lessons.
Taken together, assess nonverbal IQ, rhythm, and naming repertoire first, then choose either direct ABA lessons or skip ahead if the child shows Inc-BiN.
Why it matters
Stop assuming all early readers need the same phonological warm-ups. Run quick nonverbal IQ and rhythm probes. If scores are low, weave clapping games and visual puzzles into your ABA sessions before you drill letter sounds. This small shift can shorten the path to print for kids with ID.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The present study investigated the linguistic and cognitive predictors of early literacy in 17 children with intellectual disabilities (ID) (mean age: 7; 6 years) compared to 24 children with normal language acquisition (NLA) (mean age: 6; 0 years), who were all in the so-called partial alphabetic phase of reading (Ehri, 2005). In each group, children's performances in early literacy skills (phonological awareness, letter knowledge, and word decoding) were assessed, as well as their achievement in linguistic and cognitive measures associated to these skills. The results showed that, notwithstanding the fact that there were no differences in word decoding, children with ID lagged behind on all predictor measures relevant to early literacy skills compared to children with NLA. Moreover, whereas children with NLA showed a regular predictive pathway of early literacy skills, children with ID showed a deviant pattern, in which nonverbal intelligence and rhythmic skills proved to be of major importance. Also letter knowledge appeared to be involved in their early literacy processing. It can be tentatively concluded that in the ID group, children's level of nonverbal intellectual abilities in combination with rhythmic ability proves pivotal in the development of their early literacy skills.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2014 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2014.03.025