Language abilities in children with Down syndrome: evidence for a specific syntactic delay

Who do you refer to? How young students with mild intellectual disability confront anaphoric ambiguities in texts and sentences

“…This alternative to traditional training programmes on reading could have a direct beneficial effect on reading comprehension but could also liberate resources devoted to metacognition. This solution could be especially interesting for some aetiologies of ID like Down syndrome, which seems to present a specific delay on syntax acquisition (Fowler, 1990).…”

Translational research on early language development: Current challenges and future directions

“…Evidence for both delayed and deviant aspects of early language and nonverbal cognitive development has been reported for children with Down syndrome (Abbeduto & Murphy, 2004;Beeghly, Weiss-Perry, & Cicchetti, 1990;Chapman & Hesketh, 2001;Fowler, 1990;Miller, 1990). With increasing age, young children with Down syndrome exhibit increasing linguistic deficits in relation to their nonverbal cognitive abilities (Chapman, 2003;Chapman & Hesketh, 2001), including pretend play (Beeghly, 1997;Beeghly, Perry, & Cicchetti, 1989;Cielinski, Vaughn, Seifer, & Contreras, 1995).…”

“…With increasing age, young children with Down syndrome exhibit increasing linguistic deficits in relation to their nonverbal cognitive abilities (Chapman, 2003;Chapman & Hesketh, 2001), including pretend play (Beeghly, 1997;Beeghly, Perry, & Cicchetti, 1989;Cielinski, Vaughn, Seifer, & Contreras, 1995). However, production delays tend to exceed comprehension delays, and syntactic skills are more severely compromised than lexical or pragmatic abilities Fowler, 1990;Miller, 1990). Fowler (1990) has reported that many children with Down syndrome do not progress beyond the early stages of morphological and syntactic development.…”

“…However, production delays tend to exceed comprehension delays, and syntactic skills are more severely compromised than lexical or pragmatic abilities Fowler, 1990;Miller, 1990). Fowler (1990) has reported that many children with Down syndrome do not progress beyond the early stages of morphological and syntactic development. Strengths and weaknesses have also been reported for cognitive skills associated with language functioning.…”

Language development in children with Down syndrome - Reasons for optimism

“…The research in this area is reviewed in a recent chapter by Anne Fowler (Fowler 1990). She suggests that while children with Down's syndrome are able to build up a lexicon of words, they may have a specific difficulty with acquiring the grammar and syntax of language, which they are not able to overcome, and that this may be a ceiling imposed by the genetic condition.…”