AIA - Sue Buckley "DS Research - Past, Present, Future"

These will be stream of conscious notes…

Listening to Sue Buckley

Sue Buckley gave the Plenary Session. She gave a history of research. Speech and language – Signing is a benefit as it makes up for the gap between understanding and expressive language. Kids with DS want to communicate (v. kids with Autism)mso they will use gestures to get their point across. Teenagers – know a lot of vocabulary – lots to say but can’t say it clearly. Causes?

Hearing loss plays a part. Slow vocabulary learning may delay grammar. Difficulties with verbal short-term memory. Early speech discrimination? Speech motor issues.

Typical Kids need 200 words in their to start to use ing and possessives, etc. Big vocabulary – need to accelerate this. Need to teach vocabulary quickly to get into the expressed grammar. They look at typical development and compare the critical points of intervention.

Hearing all the sounds in words is critically important.

Working memory
Central Executive
Verbal short term memory – helps make sense of it
Phonological loop – holds the sentences

Episodic buffer

Visual sort term memory – this is the store for keeping visual memory
Visual spatial scratchpad

Working memory – helps you understand what is coming next. DS delayed working memory has an issues with school. We can do something to improve it.

Increase in memory rates helps by learning more vocabulary. Helps your memory system.

Sue Gavocol at York – has some good research – Google it

Visual memory skills are better than verbal. An issue is phonological loop deficit. Speech discrimination with babies. Memory training games are very helpful. Memory training – development new pilot with kids with DS – developed in Sweden.

Reading is a strength. Word reading is a strength from 3 years old. Reading often better than mental age or language measures would predict. Wide range of achievement with reading skills commonly around 7-8 years level but some (10%) reading at age level. Reading comprehension is usually 6-12 months behind word reading ability – memory issues and language delays.

Our kids read by sight longer than other children. Reading instruction may improve language and working memories.

Reading leads to better spoken language.

Boost reading, spoken language or working memory and it boosts all the others.

They learn skills in the same order – sometimes they get out of phase at different order.

Need to get best practices into classrooms. Our kids need to be taught differently. Notion that we’d teach our kids reading earlier isn’t embraced. Special ed teachers have a hard time changing as well. We need more evidence based practice. Measured interventions need to happen.

Need to find things were we can practically put things in practice. Raise expectaions. Target speech language from birth – support all learning visually, train working memory, teach reading and use reading to teach language.

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