Growth and Decline in Language and Phonological Memory Over Two Years Among Adolescents With Down Syndrome

Abstract

Forty-two adolescents with Down syndrome (DS) ages 10 to 21 years completed a battery of language and phonological memory measures twice, 2 years apart. Individual differences were highly stable across two years. Receptive vocabulary scores improved, there was no change in receptive or expressive grammar scores, and nonword repetition scores declined. Digit memory and expressive vocabulary scores improved among younger adolescents, but generally held steady among older adolescents. These patterns may reveal key points in development at which interventions may be best applied. Further research is needed to understand specific processes in tasks that appear to be slowing or declining during adolescence. They may be important for understanding early aging and dementia in DS.

Verbal short-term memory and sentence comprehension in German children and adolescents with Down syndrome: Beware of the task

“…With respect to scores obtained in the TROG, Laws (1998) reports a mean raw score of 4 ( SD = 3, range 0–11) for the 33 participants with DS (age 5–18 years) in her study. 5 For an NWR test similar to the one adopted in our study, Conners et al (2018) report a mean raw score of 5.7 ( SD = 2.9, maximum raw score 18 for 18 items) for 42 individuals with DS, aged 10–21 years. All these values conform to the data presented in our study (see Table 2), indicating that the results on sentence comprehension and NWR presented here for German-speaking children/adolescents with DS fit well into the present state of knowledge that finds NWR and sentence comprehension to be affected in many but not all individuals with DS.…”

Eficacia de la intervención en las dimensiones del lenguaje en alumnado con Síndrome de Down. Una revisión teórica

“…Respecto al tipo de estudio, se ha podido observar que hay dos tendencias principales: los estudios comparativos con grupo de control y los estudios de campo. En este caso, los estudios comparativos prevalecen frente a los estudios de campo, puesto que estudios comparativos se han encontrado 12 (Calero et al 2010;Moraleda, 2011;Pérez, Mendoza et al 2012;Polisenska y Kapalkovà, 2013;Visootsakl et al 2013;Andreou y Katsarou, 2013;Galeote et al 2013;Lázaro et al 2014;Naess et al 2015;Edgin et al 2015;Witecy y Penke, 2017;Mason et al 2017;Conners et al 2018); mientras que estudios de campo hay 8 (Diez-Itza y Miranda, 2007;Cleland et al 2008;Galeote et al 2010;Galeote et al 2012;Knight, Kurtz y Georgiadou, 2015;Eggers y Eerdenbrugh, 2016;Smith, Naess y Jarrold, 2017;Conners, Tungate et al 2018).…”

“…En cuanto a la edad de la muestra la preferencia está repartida entre dos vertientes: investigaciones cuya muestra pertenece a la edad escolar, en concreto se han hallado 11 (Diez-Itza y Miranda, 2007;Cleland et al 2008;Moraleda, 2011;Pérez, Mendoza et al 2012;Lázaro, Garayzabal y Moraleda, 2014;Naess et al 2015;Knight, Kurtz y Georgiadou, 2015;Witecy y Penke, 2017;Smith et al 2017;Conners, Tungate et al 2018), e investigaciones dirigidas hacia la edad preescolar, de las cuales se han obtenido 9 (Calero et al 2010;Polisenska y Kapalkovà, 2013;Edgin et al 2015;Galeote et al 2010;Galeote, Soto et al 2012;Galeote, Checa et al 2013;Mason et al 2017).…”

“…Además, respecto a la distribución de la muestra solo 8 estudios de los 20 revisados cuentan con grupo de control (Moraleda, 2012;Pérez, Mendoza et al 2012;Andreou y Katsarou, 2013;Galeote, Checa et al 2013;Visootsak et al 2013;Lázaro et al 2014;Polisenská y Kapalková, 2014;Naess et al 2015). En referencia a la duración de las intervenciones, solo 3 de los estudios revisados son investigaciones longitudinales (Naess et al 2015;Mason et al 2017;Conners et al 2018), los 17 restantes son estudios transversales.…”

Verb production by individuals with Down syndrome during narration

“…All participants came from a larger study on language development in DS (see Conners, Tungate, Abbeduto, Merrill, & Faught, 2018;Loveall et al, 2016) and were recruited from various schools, agencies, and research participation registries in Alabama, Wisconsin, and California. General inclusion criteria for participants across all groups to be in the larger study were: 1) native English speaker, 2) speech used as the primary mode of communication, 3) without an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis, and 4) no physical disabilities that prevented meaningful participation (e.g.…”