Reading through the reader's eyes with Chromosome 21 Trisomy: a study on reading processing

Abstract

Reading is an important object for the subject's autonomy and performance in society. As a human creation, it needs to be learned, with the school being its main promoting institution. For learning to read to occur, adequate conditions need to be offered, considering its nature as a complex and cognitive object and the learner's initial conditions. However, even under adequate conditions, some learners may still face difficulties in the learning process, due to delays and impairments in the skills and competencies necessary for reading. The group analyzed in this research, people with Chromosome Trisomy (T21), presents cognitive and language delays at all levels and memory impairment, factors that are essential for reading processing. Given this, we aimed to investigate, describe and analyze the reading processing of people with T21, at two times: before (TIME 1) and after intervention (TIME 2); in addition to investigating whether the intervention contributes to the development and advancement of reading. Our hypothesis is that the aforementioned delays and impairments have a negative influence on reading aspects, making processing difficult, but not preventing it, since there can be improvement with appropriate intervention. Three people with trisomy 21 participated in this study, all literate or in the final process of becoming literate, between 15 and 20 years of age, living in the Southwest of Bahia. The data was collected remotely, due to the coronavirus pandemic, using various techniques, such as: oral reading, cloze test and introspection. Our results showed that the readers studied presented a reading path similar to that of typical learners, however, only in the initial period of learning to read, as they present oral deviations common to this period, excessive use of bottom-up processing, low reading fluency, in addition to low performance in comprehension, even at a more advanced school level and age. However, at time 2, that is, after intervention, we observed improvement in all aspects of reading. Therefore, given our results, we cannot deny that people with T21 can learn to read, demystifying what, for a long time, was imposed as true: people with T21 do not read. However, it will take them longer to learn and develop reading and will need intervention with reading instruction that considers their initial learning conditions and that provides the learning and development of reading as a social activity. It is concluded that the specificities of the person with trisomy 21 have a negative influence on reading processing, making it difficult to develop the required skills. However, an intervention that considers these specificities and the complex and cognitive nature of reading contributes to improving this skill. Although we bring pioneering results on the reading processing of people with T21, which has not yet been done by any study, it is necessary for other studies to be carried out, since our number of participants is small and there are still few studies which focus on reading texts and not isolated words.