Mothers' talk to children with Down Syndrome, language impairment, or typical development about familiar and unfamiliar nouns and verbs

AbstractThis study investigated how forty-six mothers modified their talk about familiar and unfamiliar nouns and verbs when interacting with their children with Down Syndrome (DS), language impairment (LI), or typical development (TD). Children (MLUs < 2·7) were group-matched on expressive vocabulary size. Mother–child dyads were recorded playing with toy animals (noun task) and action boxes (verb task). Mothers of children with DS used shorter utterances and more verb labels in salient positions than the other two groups. All mothers produced unfamiliar target nouns in short utterances, in utterance-final position, and with the referent perceptually available. Mothers also talked more about familiar nouns and verbs and labelled them more often and more consistently. These findings suggest that mothers of children in the early period of language development fine-tune their input in ways that reflect their children's vocabulary knowledge, but do so differently for nouns and verbs.

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The Composition of Early Vocabulary in Spanish Children With Down Syndrome and Their Peers With Typical Development

American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology ◽

10.1044/2016_ajslp-15-0095 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 25 (4) ◽

pp. 605-619 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Elena Checa ◽

Miguel Galeote ◽

Pilar Soto

Keyword(s):

Down Syndrome ◽

Language Learning ◽

Typical Development ◽

Vocabulary Size ◽

Children With Down Syndrome ◽

Spanish Speaking ◽

Closed Class ◽

Communicative Development ◽

Significant Difference ◽

And Gender

Purpose There are very few studies, and at present none in Spanish, on vocabulary composition in children with Down syndrome (DS). Nor has the topic been widely assessed in Spanish-speaking children with typical development (TD). This study analyzed the composition of early vocabularies in a large sample of Spanish-speaking children with DS and compared it with that of children with TD. Method We studied 108 children with DS and 108 children with TD with mental ages between 8 and 29 months, matched for size of productive vocabulary and gender. The MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (Fenson et al., 1993, 2007), adapted to the language development profile of children with DS, were used. The categories examined were nouns, predicates, closed-class words, and social words. Results The performance of children with DS was similar to that of children with TD with the same vocabulary size. The only significant difference was the larger production of nouns by children with DS. The trends of development in the different classes of words were also similar. Conclusions The strategies used by children with DS to learn vocabulary may be similar to those used by children with TD in the first stages of language learning.

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Developing a List of Expressive Vocabulary forFarsi-speakingChildrenAged24-48Months:Comparison Between Down Syndrome and Typically Developing Children

Journal of Modern Rehabilitation ◽

10.18502/jmr.v15i4.7747 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Elham Masoumi ◽

Zahra Malmir ◽

Zahra Soleymani ◽

Mina Mohammadi Nouri

Keyword(s):

Down Syndrome ◽

Language Development ◽

Age Groups ◽

Vital Role ◽

Typically Developing ◽

Expressive Vocabulary ◽

Typically Developing Children ◽

Vocabulary Size ◽

Children With Down Syndrome ◽

Significant Difference

Introduction: Expressive vocabulary plays a vital role in child language development, and its assessment can be one of the essential indicators to identify language developmental delay, especially in children with Down syndrome. We developed a list of expressive vocabulary and compared the size and class of expressive vocabularies between typically developing and Down syndrome children. Materials and Methods: Expressive vocabulary of 150 children was examined in this study. A total of 120 typically developing Farsi-speaking children (in four age Groups, with a 6-month interval) and 30 children with Down syndrome (aged 24-48 months) participated in this study. The parents of the children filled out the form that included 636 words from different vocabulary classes. These classes were based on studies that investigated language development in Farsi-speaking children. Results: The expressive vocabulary size in Farsi-speaking children was significantly higher than in Down syndrome children (P≤0.001). There was no statistically significant difference between boys and girls regarding expressive vocabulary size in two Groups of children. The size of nouns in all age Groups is more than other classes, and the size of conjunctions in all age Groups is less than the other ones. A direct correlation was found between age and the size of expressive vocabulary. Conclusion: According to the study findings, the list of expressive vocabulary can detect delays in developing expressive vocabulary.

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Early grammatical development in Spanish children with Down syndrome

Journal of Child Language ◽

10.1017/s0305000912000591 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 41 (1) ◽

pp. 111-131 ◽

Cited By ~ 18

Author(s):

MIGUEL GALEOTE ◽

PILAR SOTO ◽

EUGENIA SEBASTIÁN ◽

ELENA CHECA ◽

CONCEPCIÓN SÁNCHEZ-PALACIOS

Keyword(s):

Down Syndrome ◽

Developmental Pattern ◽

Size Analysis ◽

Typical Development ◽

Vocabulary Size ◽

Children With Down Syndrome ◽

Number Of Children ◽

Grammatical Development ◽

Mental Age ◽

Morphosyntactic Development

ABSTRACTThe objective of this work was to analyze morphosyntactic development in a wide sample of children with Down syndrome (DS) (n = 92) and children with typical development (TD) (n = 92) with a mental age (MA) of 20 to 29 months. Children were individually matched for gender and MA (Analysis 1) and for vocabulary size (Analysis 2). Information about morphosyntax was obtained using an adaptation of the CDI for children with DS. In both analyses, the number of children with DS and with TD who combined words was similar. Analysis 1 showed that children with DS produced shorter utterances, with less morphosyntactic complexity and less morphological suffixes than children with TD, despite having the same mental age. The developmental pattern was similar, although slower in children with DS. Analysis 2 showed that the performance of children with DS was lower than the performance of children with TD in relation to morphosyntactic complexity and morphological suffixes.

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