Interpreting writing of children with intellectual disabilities: a comparative study

Abstract

This article reports the results of developmental test analyses on literacy conducted with children with intellectual disabilities in Quebec and Brazil. Grounded on studies carried out in Argentina by Ferreiro and Teberosky (1986), with children without intellectual disabilities, we deal, comparatively, with three aspects in the development of literacy in children with intellectual disabilities: their interpretation of fragments of writing, the connection they establish between letters and numbers, and their knowledge of letters. The level of intellectual disability just as the stimulation to reading are taken into account in the analysis of data related to the three aspects previously mentioned. Children with intellectual disabilities develop, in many aspects, similarly to the children without intellectual disabilities during emergent literacy. Nevertheless, they are less consistent in the use of writing classifying criteria, as well as in their discriminating letters from numbers. Although, the level of intellectual disability influenced the children’s progress greatly, the acquisition of the knowledge of letters differed mostly in accordance to the level of stimulation to reading.