Parental Reports of Spoken Language Skills in Children With Down Syndrome

2001 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 179-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Berglund ◽  
Mårten Eriksson ◽  
Iréne Johansson

Spoken language in children with Down syndrome and in children in a normative group was compared. Growth trends, individual variation, sex differences, and performance on vocabulary, pragmatic, and grammar scales as well as MaxLU (maximum length of utterance) were explored. Subjects were 330 children withDown syndrome (age range: 1–5 years) and 336 children in a normative group (1;4–2;4 years;months). The Swedish Early Communicative Development Inventory-words and sentences (SECDI-w&s) was employed. Performance of children with Down syndrome at ages 3;0 and 4;0 was comparable with that ofchildren in the normative group at ages 1;4 and 1;8 respectively. In comparison with children in the normative group of similar vocabulary size, children with Down syndrome lagged slightly on pragmatic and grammar scales. The early development proceeded in most cases with exponential or logistic growth. This stresses the great potential of early intervention.

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 605-619 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Checa ◽  
Miguel Galeote ◽  
Pilar Soto

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.


1998 ◽  
Vol 41 (5) ◽  
pp. 1125-1135 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Cristina Caselli ◽  
Stefano Vicari ◽  
Emiddia Longobardi ◽  
Laura Lami ◽  
Claudia Pizzoli ◽  
...  

This study investigated the development of language and communication in children with Down syndrome (DS). More specifically, the aim was to examine the relations among verbal comprehension, verbal production, and gesture production in the very early stages of development. Forty children (age range: 10–49 months) with DS and 40 children with normal development (age range: 8–17 months) participated in this study. Children with DS came from two Italian health centers. The communicative and linguistic development of children with DS was measured by administering the Italian version of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory. The children with DS were severely delayed when compared with normally developing children in reaching the developmental stages. In such children a dissociation emerged between verbal comprehension and production, in favor of comprehension, whereas a synchronous development was found between vocal lexical comprehension and gestural production. The individual differences previously reported in these children are also evident in all domains examined. There were no significant differences between children with DS and typically developing controls matched for lexical comprehension on verbal production. However the two groups differed significantly in gestural development, suggesting a "gesture advantage" in children with DS compared with controls matched for word comprehension. Some possible reasons for this dissociative profile are discussed.


Gesture ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvia Stefanini ◽  
Martina Recchia ◽  
Maria Cristina Caselli

We examined the relationship between spontaneous gesture production and spoken lexical ability in children with Down syndrome (DS) in a naming task. Fifteen children with DS (3;8–8;3 years) were compared to 15 typically developing (TD) children matched for developmental age (DATD) (2;6–4;3 years of chronological age) and 15 matched for lexical ability identified by the MacArthur-Bates CDI questionnaire (LATD) (1;9–2;6 years of chronological age). Children of the DATD group displayed a larger number of correct spoken answers compared to other groups, while DS and LATD groups showed a similar naming accuracy. In comparison to both groups of TD children, a higher number of unintelligible answers was produced by children with DS, indicating that their spoken language is characterized by serious phono-articulatory difficulties. Although children with DS did not differ from DATD and LATD controls on the total number of gestures, they produced a significantly higher percentage of representational gestures. Furthermore, DATD children produced more spoken answers without gestures, LATD children produced more bimodal answers, while children with DS gestured more without speech. Results suggest that representational gestures may serve to express meanings when children’s cognitive abilities outstrip their productive spoken language skills.


Gesture ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 299-334
Author(s):  
Arianna Bello ◽  
Silvia Stefanini ◽  
Pasquale Rinaldi ◽  
Daniela Onofrio ◽  
Virginia Volterra

Abstract In early communicative development, children with Down syndrome (DS) make extensive use of gestures to compensate for articulatory difficulties. Here, we analyzed the symbolic strategies that underlie this gesture production, compared to that used by typically developing children. Using the same picture-naming task, 79 representational gestures produced by 10 children with DS and 42 representational gestures produced by 10 typically developing children of comparable developmental age (3;1 vs. 2;9, respectively) were collected. The gestures were analyzed and classified according to four symbolic strategies. The two groups performed all of the strategies, with no significant differences for either choice or frequency of the strategies used. The item analysis highlighted that some photographs tended to elicit the use of the same strategy in both groups. These results indicate that similar symbolic strategies are active in children with DS as in typically developing children, which suggests interesting similarities in their symbolic development.


2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-83
Author(s):  
Tiia Tulviste ◽  
Astra Schults

Parental reports are a widely-used source of information about infants’ and toddlers’ communicative skills, but parent-report instruments valid for children older than 30 months are less known. This study explored individual variability in children’s communicative skills at the age of 3;0 via parental reports using the Estonian (E) CDI-III. The validity of ECDI-III was established through correlations with another parent-report instrument (ECDI-II) and a standardized examiner-administered language assessment (New Reynell Developmental Language Scales; NRDLS). A hundred Estonian-speaking children ( M age = 35.77 months, age range from 34 to 39 months; 20 of them with reported language difficulties) participated in the study. Relations between different communicative skills and the impact of such factors as the child’s gender, maternal and paternal education, reported language difficulties, the number of siblings, and day care attendance on variability in vocabulary size were also considered. The results showed that the ECDI-III components were moderately to strongly associated with each other, with the ECDI-II and NRDLS. Children with reported language difficulties scored lower on all language measures, except for orthographic awareness. Girls, children of more educated mothers, children with older siblings, and those who had attended day care for more months obtained higher vocabulary scores.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Adem Ugurlu ◽  
Emre Altinkurt

Purpose. To evaluate ocular findings in children with Down syndrome and to compare with the healthy children group. Methods. The study patients were divided into two groups as the diagnosed Down syndrome group and the control group. The study was designed as a prospective and single-center study in Istanbul University Faculty of Medicine Department of Ophthalmology. The study included 93 patients in the age range from 7 to 18 years, who applied to the ophthalmology department of our clinic in the period from July 2017 to June 2018. The study included the patients allocated into the control group and the Down syndrome patients allocated into the patient group, containing 49 and 44 participants, respectively. All patients underwent complete ophthalmologic examination with biomicroscopy. Autorefractometer measurements were performed in all patients, and the best corrected visual acuity (BCVA) was determined with the use of the Snellen chart. All patients underwent spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) measurements for central foveal retinal (CRT), subfoveal choroidal (CCT), and peripapillary retinal nerve fiber layer (pRNFL) thicknesses. Results. The average CRT was 241.2 ± 25.7 microns in Down syndrome group and 219.4 ± 21.1 microns in the control group. There was a statistically significant difference between the groups in regards to CRT (p<0.001). The average pRNFL values were 123.1 ± 15.4 microns in the Down syndrome group and 102.2 ± 8.7 microns in the control group (p<0.001). Conclusions. In the subjects with Down syndrome, the incidence of lens opacities, strabismus, and amblyopia was higher than the control group. CRT and pRNFL were thicker in the Down syndrome group than in control group. This may represent retinal developmental changes in the patients with Down syndrome.


Author(s):  
Tooba Zia ◽  
Fozia Akram

The present study explores the relationship among Parenting styles, Coping Strategies and Life Satisfaction of parents having children with Down syndrome. Purposive sampling and comparative study were used to select the sample. A sample consisted of (N=100) parents mothers and fathers of Down syndrome children were taken from different government and private institutes of Faisalabad. The sample was further divided into (n=50) mothers and (n=50) fathers of Down syndrome children. The age range of participants was taken 30-55 years above. Parenting Styles Dimension Questionnaire (PSDQ) translated Urdu version by (Batool, 2013). Coping Response Inventory (CRI) translated Urdu version by (Mahmood & Sheraz, 2012) and Life satisfaction scale (LSS) Urdu version translated by (Mahmood, 2013) were used for data collection. Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient and Independent Sample T-Test were calculated for statistical analysis. Findings indicates that male parents of Down syndrome children scored high on Authoritative and permissive parenting styles and it’s also showed that male parents of Down syndrome children have scored high on the scale of approach coping styles .Through that study it indicates that male parents use more approach coping styles than female parents. And male parents are equally satisfied with their lives. This study aims to use effective coping strategies and parenting styles to improve the quality of life of parents of those who are having children with disability. It also aims to increase the role of the clinical psychologist in the treatment of those children who are suffering from disability or psychological illness and also psych educate parents those are directly or indirectly taking pain of their children.


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