Writing abilities in intellectual disabilities: a comparison between Down and Williams syndrome.
Students with Down or Williams syndrome can create age-level stories—target the transcription step, not the ideas.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Varuzza et al. (2015) compared writing skills in students with Down syndrome and Williams syndrome.
They matched each student to a typically developing child of the same mental age.
The team looked at two parts of writing: composing ideas and writing or dictating them down.
What they found
Both groups composed stories as well as their mental-age peers.
When they had to write or dictate the words, their accuracy was lower.
The trouble was in the act of getting words on paper, not in thinking them up.
How this fits with other research
Halstead et al. (2018) found the opposite pattern in autism: students with ASD were behind in both composing and handwriting.
The two studies differ because Cristiana tested dictation while Elizabeth pooled normal handwriting; the task changes the result.
Rossi et al. (2011) showed that Williams syndrome also trips over spoken storytelling, repeating and pausing more than peers.
Together the papers say: help Williams kids with output—spoken or written—not with coming up with ideas.
Why it matters
Stop drilling story planners for kids with Down or Williams syndrome.
Instead, give keyboards, scribes, or extra handwriting practice so their good ideas reach the page.
Check both syndromes for motor or dictation supports, not composition goals.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Writing is a complex task that requires the integration of multiple cognitive, linguistic, and motor abilities. Until now, only a few studies investigated writing abilities in individuals with Intellectual Disability (ID). The aim of the present exploratory study was to provide knowledge on the organization of writing in two populations with ID, Down syndrome (DS) and Williams syndrome (WS), trying to disentangle different components of the process. A battery tapping diverse writing demands as low-level transcription skills as well as high-level writing skills was proposed to 13 individuals with WS, 12 individuals with DS and 11 mental-age-matched typically developing (TD) children. Results showed that the two groups with genetic syndromes did not differ from TD in writing a list of objects placed in bedroom, in the number of errors in the text composition, in a text copying task and in kind of errors made. However, in a word dictation task, individuals with DS made more errors than individuals with WS and TD children. In a pseudoword dictation task, both individuals with DS and WS showed more errors than TD children. Our results showed good abilities in individuals with ID in different aspects of writing, involving not only low-level transcription skills but also high-level composition skills. Contrary to the pessimistic view, considering individuals with ID vulnerable for failure, our results indicate that the presence of ID does not prevent the achievement of writing skills.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2015 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2014.11.011