Assessing pragmatic communication in children with Down syndrome

Smith, Elizabeth; Naess, K; Jarrold, Christopher

doi:10.1016/j.jcomdis.2017.06.003

Cited by 47 publications

(43 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…Priority is given to the suprasegmental features over segmental ones. Although the intelligibility of the utterances of speakers with Down syndrome is seriously affected [7], prosodic mistakes are what is mainly responsible for pragmatic failures in spoken communication, and this can lead to insecurities and low self esteem in people with Down syndrome. Therefore, we argue that any improvement in the suprasegmental domain will lead to an improvement in communication.…”

Section: Game Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although lexical acquisition is delayed, difficulties with morphology and syntax appear to be more pronounced (e.g., incorrect use of morphemes; use of short sentences) [6]. With regard to pragmatics, individuals with Down syndrome have trouble producing and understanding questions and emotions, signaling turn-taking, or keeping to topics in conversation; while the study of Smith et al [7] demonstrated that children with Down syndrome are impaired relative to norms from typically developing children in all areas of pragmatics. At the phonological level, speech intelligibility is seriously damaged by the presence of errors on producing some phonemes, the loss of consonants and the simplification of syllables [8].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Automatic Assessment of Prosodic Quality in Down Syndrome: Analysis of the Impact of Speaker Heterogeneity

et al. 2019

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Prosody is a fundamental speech element responsible for communicative functions such as intonation, accent and phrasing, and prosodic impairments of individuals with intellectual disabilities reduce their communication skills. Yet, technological resources have paid little attention to prosody. This study aims to develop an automatic classifier to predict the prosodic quality of utterances produced by individuals with Down syndrome, and to analyse how inter-individual heterogeneity affects assessment results. A therapist and an expert in prosody judged the prosodic appropriateness of a corpus of Down syndrome' utterances collected through a video game. The judgments of the expert were used to train an automatic classifier that predicts prosodic quality by using a set of fundamental frequency, duration and intensity features. The classifier accuracy was 79.3% and its true positive rate 89.9%. We analyzed how informative each of the features was for the assessment and studied relationships between participants' developmental level and results: interspeaker variability conditioned the relative weight of prosodic features for automatic classification and participants' developmental level was related to the prosodic quality of their productions. Therefore, since speaker variability is an intrinsic feature of individuals with Down syndrome, it should be considered to attain an effective automatic prosodic assessment system.

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Section: Game Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Automatic Assessment of Prosodic Quality in Down Syndrome: Analysis of the Impact of Speaker Heterogeneity

et al. 2019

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“…Far less is known about the pragmatic language abilities, or social use of language, of individuals with DS, particularly for individuals who have progressed beyond pre-linguistic babbling or single-word use. The limited literature points to a complex pragmatic language profile of relative strengths and difficulties, varying by sub-domain assessed and comparison group (e.g., autism spectrum disorder and fragile X syndrome; typical development) used (Abbeduto et al, 2008; Lee et al, 2017; Martin, Losh, Estigarribia, Sideris, & Roberts, 2013; Roberts et al, 2007; Smith, Naess, & Jarrold, 2017). …”

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confidence: 99%

Inferential language use by youth with Down syndrome during narration

Ashby

Channell

Abbeduto

2017

Research in Developmental Disabilities

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We examined inferential language use by youth with Down syndrome (DS) in the context of narrative storytelling relative to younger typically developing (TD) children and same-aged peers with fragile X syndrome (FXS) matched on nonverbal cognitive ability level. Participants’ narratives were coded for the use of different types of inferential language. Participants with DS used proportionately less inferential language overall relative to their counterparts with TD or FXS, although mean length of utterance accounted for group differences observed for the DS-TD group comparison only. Patterns of inferential language use varied across inferential subtypes and across participant groups, with mean length of utterance playing a significant role in group differences. These findings suggest potential syndrome specificity to the DS phenotype regarding impairments in inferential language use that can be partially explained by level of expressive syntactic ability and should be considered in future research. Clinical interventions within the DS population, therefore, should target to some extent the use of inferential language and complex sentence structure.

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“…Smith, Naess and Jarrold (2017) study a group of 29, eight year old children with DS and discovered a profile of relative strengths and weaknesses that was found in the children with DS (Smith, Naess & Jarrold, 2017); the area of nonverbal communication was significantly stronger, while the area of understanding context was significantly poorer, relative to the other areas of pragmatics assessed in these children. Relationships between areas of pragmatics and other linguistic areas, as well as aspects of vocabulary and social functioning, were observed.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Study regarding the role played by exercise in developing the lung capacity in teenagers with Down syndrome

Camelia

2017

PROSOC

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This research aims to study the respiratory modifications that happen after exercising in teenagers with Down syndrome (DS). The research is based on the pathophysiological theoretical notions regarding DS and theoretical-methodical notions of exercise. The study was conducted over 6 months, in the gym of the Faculty of Movement, Sports, and Health Sciences, on 20 subjects. Exercising was used as an instrument to reach several objectives, such as team work, motor skill learning and the reeducation of respiration. To reach these objectives, exercising was used as individual and team play, and to identify the modifications in the studied parameters, several methods were used: a social skill questionnaire and the monitoring of pulse and respiratory rate before and after exercising. The results of the study have demonstrated an improvement in the respiratory parameters, a consolidation of the motor skills and a development of the social skills.

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Assessing pragmatic communication in children with Down syndrome

Cited by 47 publications

References 57 publications

Automatic Assessment of Prosodic Quality in Down Syndrome: Analysis of the Impact of Speaker Heterogeneity

Automatic Assessment of Prosodic Quality in Down Syndrome: Analysis of the Impact of Speaker Heterogeneity

Inferential language use by youth with Down syndrome during narration

Study regarding the role played by exercise in developing the lung capacity in teenagers with Down syndrome

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