The role of phonological awareness and letter-sound knowledge in the reading development of children with intellectual disabilities

• Phonological awareness and letter-sound knowledge predicted progress in reading.
• Being included predicted more progress in reading than being in a special school.
• Spoken language did not predict progress in reading.

Our study investigated if phonological awareness and letter-sound knowledge were predictors of reading progress in children with intellectual disabilities (ID) with unspecified etiology. An academic achievement test was administered to 129 children with mild or moderate ID when they were 6–8 years old, as well as one and two school years later. Findings indicated that phonological awareness and letter-sound knowledge at 6–8 years of age predicted progress in word and non-word reading after one school year and two school years after controlling for IQ, age, expressive vocabulary, spoken language, and type of placement. Phonological awareness and letter-sound knowledge at 6–8 years of age also predicted progress in reading comprehension after one school year and two school years. These findings suggest that training phonological awareness skills combined with explicit phonics instruction is important to foster reading progress in children with mild and moderate ID with unspecified etiology.