Personal narrative skills of school-aged children with Down syndrome.

Background: Personal narratives are descriptions of past events experienced by the speaker and are one of the most commonly found forms of narration in children. The ability to tell personal narratives is considered critical for socio-emotional wellbeing and academic performance.

Aims: This study investigated the personal narrative skills of 25 children with Down syndrome (age 5;11-13;1 years) who attended predominantly mainstream primary schools in New Zealand and were classified as beginning readers.

Integrated speech and phonological awareness intervention for pre-school children with Down syndrome.

Background: Children with Down syndrome experience difficulty with both spoken and written language acquisition, however controlled intervention studies to improve these difficulties are rare and have typically focused on improving one language domain.

Aims: To investigate the effectiveness of an integrated intervention approach on the speech, letter knowledge, and phonological awareness development of ten pre-school children with Down syndrome aged between 4;4 and 5;5.

Methods & Procedures: A multiple single-subject design was used to evaluate treatment effectiveness.