The Effects of Co-Treatment on Concept Development in Children With Down Syndrome

Abstract

This preliminary study investigated the effects of co-treatment by an adapted physical educator and speech-language pathologist on basic concept vocabulary learning in preschool children with Down syndrome as compared with the effects of treatment by either professional alone. In a Repeated Acquisition Design/Adapted Alternating Treatment study, 10 preschool children with Down syndrome were taught five basic concept words each week in a co-treatment intervention, in adapted physical education alone, or in speech-language therapy alone across 9 weeks. Each week, participants participated in a pre- and posttest. Four children learned the most words in the co-treatment condition and the remaining six children did not learn different numbers of words across conditions. Individual characteristics of children in the study were evaluated to determine possible factors that differentiate learning patterns among children. This preliminary study provides evidence that co-treatment may be effective for vocabulary teaching for some children with Down syndrome, particularly those with relatively high nonverbal intelligence.

The Problem Of Development Of Foreign Language Competence In Children With Intellectual Disabilities

“…The author highlights the strengths of this group of children, on which the teacher can rely in the process of work: good mechanical memory, imitative abilities, musical memory, curiosity, interest in the environment. A study by international scientists Lund, Young, and Yarbrough, (2020) provides evidence that co-treatment may be effective for vocabulary teaching for some children with Down syndrome, particularly those with relatively high non-verbal intelligence.…”

Teaching Vocabulary to Improve Print Knowledge in Preschool Children With Hearing Loss

“…Although formal basic concept assessments, such as the BBCS-3, require the examinee to point to a picture of the correct response, this mode of assessment was implemented to utilize an open-set response by giving the child the opportunity to generate one of multiple possible responses, thereby minimizing the child's opportunity for guessing. This assessment was used and validated in another study of preschool children with Down syndrome (Lund et al, 2019).…”

“…During teaching episodes, the words used with examples of "under" should include words that are already known to the child (e.g., table, window), to assist with integration of the concept with prior knowledge. The strategies offered in this protocol have been successful in teaching concepts to children with normal hearing (e.g., Lund et al, 2019) but have not yet been empirically validated for children with hearing loss.…”

Effects of Integrating Different Types of Physical Activity Into Virtual Rapid Word Learning Instruction for Children Who Are Deaf and Hard of Hearing

“…Physical activity is associated with increased learning in general (Hart et al, 2022;Loprinzi et al, 2023;Robinson et al, 2023;Roig et al, 2013;Winter et al, 2007), and with increased word learning in particular (Lund et al, 2020;Mavilidi et al, 2015;Salis, 2013;Schmidt-Kassow et al, 2014). Often this physical activity is conceptualized as a break in the cognitive task of learning; for example, in a review paper, Mahar (2011) reported that short physical activity breaks resulted in a small to moderate increase in attention-on-task in school-age children.…”

“…Although our hypothesis that physical activity would enhance word-like learning was partially confirmed in both groups, each group also had a physical activity condition in which expressive outcomes did not differ from the traditional condition. Based on Lund et al (2020), we had hypothesized that, in both groups, children would learn the fewest word-like forms in the traditional condition and the most in the semantic richness condition, with the general condition falling in between. This hypothesis was based on prior work that shows a benefit of general physical activity on attention-to-task (Case-Smith et al, 2010), as well as previous work indicating added benefit when the physical activity is in some way related to the skill being learned (Lund, Douglas et al, 2015;Lund et al, 2020;Toumpaniari et al, 2015).…”