Can Cued Speech Improve the Syllable Awareness of the Children with Mental Disability?

Syllable Awareness is one of the key elements in learning to read. Unfortunately, children with mental disability have many difficulties in this area, and are therefore weak in their concepts of reading skills (including syllable awareness). The present study examined the effect of teaching Cued Speech of the Syllable awareness skills and its subscales (syllable segmentation, alliteration, and rhythm) to children with an intellectual disability. This was a quasi-experimental nonrandomized intervention study, of a pre-test/post-test design for evaluation of Cued Speech in the intellectually disabled. All participants selected to participate in the study was by method of convenience sampling. Ten children of an average mean age 7- 10 years, and diagnosed with an intellectual disability, were chosen to participate in this study. The participants were matched accordingly and separated into two groups. Our tool was "The Phonological Awareness Questionnaire", the collected data was analyzed with added score and T score. This study demonstrated that Cued Speech has a significant effect on the Syllable Awareness skills (P<0.05) and the subscales of Syllable segmentation (P<0.05) and the rhythm of the children with intellectual disabilities: although, no significant differences were noted there in the alliteration abilities. This study results concluded that the use of Cued Speech in the rehabilitation programs of children with mental disabilities can improve their syllable awareness skills and facilitate their reading skills. Keywords: Key words: