Background: Although many children with Down syndrome experience hearing loss, there has been little research to investigate its impact on speech and language development. Studies that have investigated the association give inconsistent results. These have often been based on samples where children with the most severe hearing impairments have…

The present study examined narrative development in children and adolescents with Down syndrome longitudinally. Narratives were collected from 32 children and adolescents with Down syndrome three times over a 1-year period. Both micro- and macrolevel analyses were conducted. Significant growth over the 1-year period was seen in semantic complexity…

Recent studies indicate that children with intellectual disabilities have functional limitations primarily in the phonological loop of working memory (Baddeley, 1986). These findings are indicative of a specific structural deficit. Building on this research, the present study examines whether it is possible to identify specific phonological…

The emergence of the Down syndrome (DS) behavioural phenotype during early development may be of great importance for early intervention. The main goal of this study was to investigate the good-imitator-poor-talker developmental profile in DS at preschool age. Twenty children with Down syndrome (DS; mean nonverbal mental age NMA 1 y10 m) and 15…

Background: It is generally assumed that children with Down syndrome (DS) present a deficit in lexical production relative to their cognitive abilities. However, the literature on this topic has recently shown several contradictory results. In addition, most studies only consider vocabulary production in its vocal modality. However it is also…

The objective of the current study was to evaluate the patterns of longitudinal change in the language abilities of 28 children with autism during early and middle childhood. Results from fitting a series of multilevel models showed that children's rate of language growth was independently predicted by (a) children's responsiveness to others' bids…

Children with autism experience difficulties in understanding social affective cues, and it has been suggested that such deficits will generalize to music. In order to investigate this proposal, typically developing individuals and children with autism and Down syndrome were compared on tasks measuring perception of affective and movement states…

The English second language development of 19 children (mean age at outset = 5 years, 4 months) from various first language backgrounds was examined every 6 months for 2 years, using spontaneous language sampling, parental questionnaires, and a standardized receptive vocabulary test. Results showed that the children's mean mental age equivalency…

It is a matter of debate whether the development of theory of mind (ToM) depends on linguistic development or is, rather, an expression of cognitive development. The study of genetic syndromes, which are characterized by intellectual impairment as well as by different linguistic profiles, may provide useful information with respect to this issue.…

Results demonstrated that when compared with normally developing children of the same mental age, the Down's syndrome Ss (6 to 12 years old) evidenced a more homogeneous pattern of syntactic usage and tended to acquire only low-level syntactic structures, as identified by the Developmental Sentence Scoring procedure. (Author)

Acquiescence, the tendency to respond affirmatively regardless of the content of a question, was examined in 57 mentally retarded children (11 to 17 years old) and 91 nonretarded children (3 to 8 years old). Embedded within the standard interview schedule for both samples were two pairs of oppositely worded questions on the same topic.…

Comparison of 28 young children with autism, 29 children with other developmental disabilities, and 28 typical children found that autistic children were significantly less compliant with parental prohibitions than were control groups. This behavior correlated with chronological age, not with mental age, language development, or parental behavior.…

Background: Previous research has emphasized the importance of gesture in early communicative development. These studies have reported that gestures are used frequently during the first two years of life and may play a transitional role in the language acquisition process. Although there are now numerous descriptions of the relationship between…

Fast mapping of novel words for objects was compared in 48 children/adolescents with Down syndrome and 48 mental-age matched children. The groups did not differ in their ability to infer a connection between the novel word and referent, comprehend the novel word after a single exposure, and produce the novel word correctly. (Author/JDD)

Data on typically developing children suggest a link between social interaction and language learning, a finding of interest both to theories of language and theories of autism. In this study, we examined social and linguistic processing of speech in preschool children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typically developing chronologically…