Additional signs and symptoms of Williams syndrome include abnormalities of connective tissue (tissue that supports the body's joints and organs) such as joint problems and soft, loose skin. Mervis CB, John AE. Consideration of these patterns in the context of what is known about the reading development of children in the general population provides a strong foundation for facilitating the reading development of children with Williams syndrome. Among the child participants with classic deletions, reading skills range from an inability to read at all to age-appropriate decoding and comprehension. Pagon, Bennett, LaVeck, Stewart, and Johnson (1987) assessed nine children and adolescents with Williams syndrome aged 10 20 years for both intellectual ability and reading ability. Am J Med Genet C Semin Med Genet. Williams syndrome. The absence of triadic joint attention is consistently raised as a concern by parents of toddlers with WS (Mervis & John, 2012). Other problems with the heart and blood vessels, including high blood pressure (hypertension) and stiff blood vessels, have also been reported in people with Williams syndrome. Karmiloff-Smith et al. Therefore, the loss of this gene appears to be a protective factor. Osborne LR. Learning to read Hebrew is likely more challenging for individuals with Williams syndrome than learning to read languages that use the Roman alphabet. Mervis CB, Morris CA. Nevertheless, these areas are critical for both academic performance and peer relationships. Learning these terms will require direct and intensive instruction in a variety of contexts. Bellugi and her colleagues (Losh, Bellugi, Reilly, & Anderson, 2000; Reilly, Losh, Bellugi, & Wulfeck, 2004) have examined the structure of childrens narratives of the wordless picture book, Frog, Where Are You? Mean DAS-II GCA was 63.14 (SD = 11.58, range: 39 98). (For a discussion of problems with using grade and age equivalents and of comparing these types of scores across different assessments, see Mervis & Robinson, 2005.). Verbal short-term memory has been measured by forward digit recall (repeating a string of numbers in the same order as the examiner provided them) or the initial trial of list recall. (2007) found that although children with WS scored significantly higher than age-matched children with autism on the CCC-2 Stereotyped Language and Nonverbal Communication scales, the two groups performed equally poorly on the Inappropriate Initiation and Use of Context scales. Only a few children spontaneously used a doll or other object as an independent agent or used one object to represent another. (Mayer, 1969) and the inferences included in these narratives. Watson MM, Lof GL. Successful single-word reading is clearly important for reading comprehension, and in the early grades, single-word reading skill is often the best predictor of reading comprehension. In the third, I consider the implications of the data presented in the first two sections, in combination with what is known about reading development in the general population, for facilitating the reading development of people with Williams syndrome. Because children with WS often have failure to thrive, many receive feeding therapy, often from an SLP. Introduction of synthetic phonics after children have already been exposed to whole word or whole language methods is much less effective, perhaps because children have to learn to suppress habits such as guessing words based on context or first letter. The information on this site should not be used as a substitute for professional medical care or advice. The first formal reports of the reading ability of individuals with Williams syndrome were published in the late 1980s. The meta-analysis results indicated that systematic phonics instruction (teaching of all major letter-sound correspondences, including consonants, vowels, and digraphs, in a clearly-defined sequence) was more effective than either whole word (having children memorize whole words; sometimes referred to as the look-say or sight-word approach) or whole language (focusing on meaning, with letter-sound correspondences taught incidentally and in context, only as needed) approaches. the contents by NLM or the National Institutes of Health. Unfortunately, this pattern of strengths and weaknesses is much harder to detect on the Wechsler tests [e.g., Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-IV (WISC-IV)], the intellectual ability tests school psychologists most commonly use. 1999 Apr 9 [updated 2023 Apr 13]. Cain K, Oakhill J. Given the delays in language onset and the continuing difficulties over time especially in relational language, and pragmatics, speech/language therapy is critical for children with WS. With respect to speech production, special attention should be paid to consonant variety and the production of words that are more than one syllable in length. J Pediatr. Volterra V, Caselli MC, Capirci O, Tonucci F, Vicari S. Early linguistic abilities of Italian children with Williams syndrome. This pattern does not hold for children with WS; for most children with WS, the onset of referential language precedes the onset of referential pointing by several months (Mervis & Bertrand, 1997). Menghini et al. This is likely to be especially important for children with Williams syndrome; based on parental and teacher report, these children often have difficulty generalizing rules that have been explicitly taught to new material. In: Alloway TP, Gathercole SE, editors. In: Morris CA, Lenhoff HM, Wang PP, editors. Stojanovik V, Perkins M, Howard S. Linguistic heterogeneity in Williams syndrome. Below we provide a brief overview of these findings; more detailed information is provided in Mervis (2009), Mervis and Becerra (2007), Mervis and John (2010a, 2010b), Morris, Lenhoff, and Wang (2006), and Farran and Karmiloff-Smith (2012). Gregg RG, Bray-Ward P. Inversion of the Williams syndrome region is a common Epub 2005 Jul As a library, NLM provides access to scientific literature. Children with Williams syndrome who have been taught reading using a systematic phonics approach both decode and comprehend significantly better than children who have been taught using a whole-word approach. In particular, it is important that phonics worksheets not be the primary method of instruction. Hypercalcemia in Patients official website and that any information you provide is encrypted Menghini D, Verucci L, Vicari S. Reading and phonological awareness in Williams syndrome. In: Mazzocco MMM, Ross JL, editors. Despite this variability, a common theme is expressed by parents when we discuss their childs schooling: Whether their child cannot read at all or reads and comprehends at a similar level to general population peers, improving his or her reading is the parents highest educational priority. Klein-Tasman BP, Mervis CB. The authors argued that these findings provide further evidence that for individuals with Williams syndrome, the process of learning to read depends disproportionately on phonological skills with only a very limited effect of semantics. Elastin deficits as well as low muscle tone were the likely sources of deviant Speech Characteristics (especially, harsh vocal quality), which affected more than half of the children. The WISC-R full-scale IQs of 10 children were <40. (2004) argued that children with Williams syndrome seemed likely to benefit from the whole word approach. Marler JA, Sitcovsky JL, Mervis CB, Kistler DJ, Wightman FL. 10.1002/mrdd.20140. (2004) included a measure of reading comprehension in their studies. Epub 2014 Jun 11. argued, based on clinical experience, that the DSM-IV criteria for GAD often do not capture the nature of worrying in children with WS. Philofsky A, Fidler DJ, Hepburn S. Pragmatic language profiles of school-age children with autism spectrum disorders and Williams syndrome. Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals. All Disorders Williams Syndrome On this page What is Williams syndrome? WS arises due to the mispairing of low-copy DNA repetitive elements at meiosis.. Losh et al. In addition, 14% of the 7 10-year-olds and 23% of the 11 16-year-olds met DSM-IV criteria for Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD). reported a large and significant difference in the performance of the participants with Williams syndrome on the Basic Reading (mean test age = 82.2 months, SD = 31.3) and Reading Comprehension (mean test age = 58.2 months, SD = 44.0) subtests of the WORD. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal. The WSA upholds the following positions on inclusion. In the initial studies of the reading abilities of individuals with Williams syndrome, researchers examined performance on standardized measures of reading and IQ. Although the ultimate level of reading achievement will be affected by a childs intellectual ability, among other factors, most if not all children with Williams syndrome should be able to learn to read if effective instruction is provided. To address possible correlates of the reading abilities of individuals with Williams syndrome, Laing et al. [Google Scholar] Mervis CB, Bertrand J. Developmental relations between cognition and language: Evidence from Williams syndrome. Neurodevelopmental disorders across the lifespan: A neuroconstructivist approach. Garayzabal Heinze E, Cuetos Vega F. Aprendizaje de la lectura en los nios con sndrome de Williams. Williams syndrome is a rare genetic disorder in which, it is claimed, language abilities are relatively strong despite mild to moderate mental retardation. Osborne LR. reported that the Williams syndrome group included significantly fewer story components than either control group and was considerably less likely to refer to the goals and motivations of the main character or to link his actions to his goal of finding his pet frog. Three children who have Williams syndrome, aged 3 years, 6 years, and 10 years. (1996) reported similar findings based on a comparison of the performance of children and adolescents with Williams syndrome on the Italian version of the TROG to that of MA-matched typically developing children. In: Shapiro B, Accardo P, editors. In: Tager-Flusberg H, editor. As has been found for the general population, method of reading instruction has a strong impact on the reading skills of children with Williams syndrome: Children who are taught to read using systematic phonics instruction both decode and comprehend significantly better, relative to IQ, than do children taught with whole word methods. Combining working memory training and comprehension strategy training should facilitate the development of reading comprehension. Systematic texts that are written so that almost all of the words involve phonics rules that the child has been taught are important. Symptoms of Williams syndrome include: Chronic ear infections and/or hearing loss. Stojanovik, Perkins, and Howard (2006) also reported very poor performance on this measure. For preschool and school-age children, a full assessment of all aspects of language and communication, including extensive observation of the childs interactions with teachers and peers in both formal and informal settings, is critical to determining if the child would benefit from language therapy and the level of intensity needed. Fluency involves reading aloud at a conversational rate and with expression. FOIA Kamil ML. Palacios-Verdu MG, Segura-Puimedon M, Borralleras C, Flores R, Del Campo M, polymorphism found more frequently in parents of children with Williams syndrome. Note, however, that most of the children would not meet the clinical-judgment standard for ASDs because they also showed important strengths that are inconsistent with ASDs. also used a paired associate procedure in which real words which varied in imageability were paired with consonant trigrams that varied in their phonetic similarity to the real word to address the importance of phonological and semantic processes in learning to read single words. The development of literacy skills in children with Down syndrome: Implications for intervention.
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