Early Reading for Students with Intellectual Disability Based on

Linguistic and Visual Perception Awareness

Endang Rochyadi and Riksma Akhlan

Department of Special Education, Faculty of Pedagogy, Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Jl. Dr.Setiabudhi No.229,

Bandung, Indonesia

endangrochyadi@upi.edu

Keywords: Early Reading, Intellectual Disability, Linguistic Awareness, Visual Perception.

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to find out the effect of early reading teaching model based on linguistic and

visual perception awareness on children with intellectual disability's reading skill. The method of this study

was quasi-experiment with a matching pretest-posttest control group involving a control group with IQs of

55-70 and mental ages of 7-10. The subjects were 66 students and 45 teachers across West Java province. The

results of the experiment showed that this model was proven to be significantly effective in improving reading

skills and managed to change intellectually disabled children's study habits. The influential factors of

linguistic awareness in improving reading skill were phonemic and syntactic awareness (path coefficient

value=0.72), while the ones in visual perception awareness were discrimination and visual memory (path

coefficient value=0.25). Linguistic and visual perception awareness influenced the whole reading process of

children with intellectual disability. This indicates that the maturity in linguistic and visual perception

awareness becomes an integral part of the whole reading learning process which the teachers should pay

attention to. The implication of this study is that linguistic awareness and visual perception awareness are the

prerequisites for early reading learning in children with intellectual disability.

1 INTRODUCTION

Reading is a crucial and fundamental skill to achieve

success in various fields (Sperlich et al., 2015;

Crowley et al., 2013; Moore, 2014). The low reading

skill of a child with intellectual disability is often

associated with his low intelligence. Studies have

proven that there is a strong correlation, i.e.

coefficient correlation of 0.36 to 0.84, between

reading skill and one’s intelligence, or called as

mental age (MA) (Barret, 1965). This strong

correlation happens at the mental age of 6. However,

when the MA of child is at 6.5, this correlation is not

as strong. This indicates that intelligence is not the

sole factor contributing to the failure to read of

children with intellectual disability (Glass and Cohen,

1986). Previous studies reported that visual and

auditory perception could also contribute to the

reading failure (Ducrot and Grainger, 2007; Stahl and

Murray, 1994; Bradley and Bryant, 1983; Kudoet et

al., 2015).

One of prerequisites for obtaining a reading skill

in a child is linguistic awareness (Harris and Sipay,

1990; Van Wingerden et al., 2017). Previous study

showed that a positive correlation between visual

perception ability and reading skill has contributed to

success in reading (Vismaia, 2003). A unique

linguistic predictor of reading for children in the

lower grades of primary schools is the capability of

understanding the text (Fuchs et al., 2012; Hood and

Conlon, 2004; Plazaand, 2007; Lord and Bishop,

2015). Phonological awareness training may also

improve skills in reading words (Channel et al., 2013;

Soltani and Roslan 2013, Ellis et al., 1989; Joseph and

Seery, 2004). Previous research with this type of

training has reported a good development of students’

reading skill during reading class (Cunningham 1990;

Chaves-Sousa et al., 2016). Those previous studies

suggested that reading requires some mastery of the

basic rules of phonology, morphology, syntax, and

semantics (Santrock, 2007), or if not - it requires of

all those aspects (Wagner et al., 1994). However,

these influenced aspects in linguistic awareness and

visual perception for children with intellectual

disabilities have unequivocally studied. Therefore,

this study was conducted to examine the most

influential aspects in linguistic awareness and visual

perception. The examined aspects in linguistic

Rochyadi, E. and Akhlan, R.

Early Reading for Students with Intellectual Disability Based on Linguistic and Visual Perception Awareness.

In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Educational Sciences (ICES 2017) - Volume 2, pages 499-502

ISBN: 978-989-758-314-8

499

awareness were the awareness of phonemes,

morphemes, syntax, and semantics, while the ones in

visual perception awareness were the discrimination

of shapes, spatial and visual memory, background,

and objects.

2 RESEARCH METHODS

This study used a matching pretest-posttest control

group quasi-experimental research design, with the

research variables: (1) The independent variables

include linguistic awareness (phonemes, morphemes,

syntax, and semantics) and visual perceptions (the

discrimination of shapes, figures, grounds, spatial and

visual memory). (2) The dependent variable in this

study is early reading mechanical skills that include

letter identification, sound blending, word attack, and

syntax. (3) Control variables are ones expected to

influence the ability to read, linguistic awareness, and

visual perception awareness. The control variables in

question are the IQs of 55-70 and the mental ages of

7-10. These variables are the intervening variables.

The quantitative data were analyzed using the

Pearson Correlation Test to find out the correlation

between linguistic and visual perception awareness

and reading skill, and then analyzed using path

analysis. The subjects of this research were 36

students who were chosen purposively as the numbers

of children with intellectual disability in Priangan

Timur (West Java) were relatively small, as small as

illustrated in Table 1.

Table 1: Research Subject.

3 RESEARCH FINDINGS

The result of the study shows that the influential

factors of linguistic awareness in improving reading

skill were phonemic and syntactic awareness (path

coefficient value=0.72), and of the visual perception

awareness were discrimination and visual memory

(path coefficient value=0.25). The findings are

illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1: The Influence of Linguistic and Visual Perception

Awareness on Reading Skill.

The reading skill comparison between

experimental and control groups is illustrated in

Figure 2. It shows that the increase in reading skill

scores of experimental group were higher than the

control group, the increase in reading skill scores of

experimental and the control groups were

significantly different. There was a strong correlation

between linguistic and visual perception awareness

and the reading skill of children with intellectual

disabilities.

Figure 2: Reading Skills of the Experimental and Control

Groups.

The different reading scores indicate the influence

of the mastery of prerequisites in reading. This studies

was very effective in improving children with

intellectual disability in three perspectives. First, in

time perspectives, the reading skill acquisition was

faster. Second, there was occurrence of learning

transfer, as indicated by changes in the knowledge

from the actual conditions to potential mastery of the

ability to read words and sentences they have never

learned. Third, there was changes in the attitudes and

beliefs of teachers to change the process of reading

teaching approach based on the mastery of

prerequisites that must be met before children were

taught how to read.

ICES 2017 - 1st International Conference on Educational Sciences

500

4 DISCUSSION

The finding showed that the influential factors of

linguistic awareness in improving reading skill were

phonemic and syntactic awareness, while the ones of

the visual perception awareness were discrimination

and visual memory (Bradley and Bryant, 1980). This

finding is different from the previous study that

reported that there was a positive correlation between

all aspects of both linguistic and visual perception

awareness and reading skill (Wagner et al., 1994).

These differences may occur because of the

different exposure to language use, where the

subjects’ mental ages ranged from 7 to 10 and

chronological ages ranged from 10 to 14.

Chronological ages can indicate the language

exposure, and mental ages indicate reasoning issues

and the weakness of children with intellectual

disability in reasoning. This requires further

examination.

However, there is no doubt that linguistic and

visual perception awareness influenced the whole

reading process of children with intellectual

disability. This indicates that the maturity in linguistic

and visual perception awareness becomes an integral

part of the whole reading learning process the

teachers should pay attention to. In this study,

discrimination and visual memory are proved to

improve the reading skill of children with intellectual

disabilities.

The implications of the findings are as follows:

the process of learning how to read is about get the

children’s linguistic and visual perception awareness

ready. Teaching how to read by implementing

structure analysis-synthesis process that ends with

sound reposition, by implementing mediated

learning; i.e., learning how to read is carried out using

a scaffolding technique, the learning process should

be in the children’s zone of proximal development

(Eren, 2009).

5 CONCLUSIONS

Early reading teaching based on linguistic and visual

perception awareness was significantly effective in

improving the reading skill of children with

intellectual disabilities. This is evident in the increase

in their reading ability to read sentences that they had

never been taught before.

The positive effect was that the reading skill

acquisition was faster, the changes in the attitudes and

beliefs of teachers to change the process of reading

teaching approach. This approach can be an

alternative to overcome learning difficulties of the

children with intellectual disability.

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