Maternal input to children with sex chromosome trisomies

Abstract

Background Although language difficulties are one of the most distinctive characteristics of the neuropsychological profile of children with sex chromosome trisomies (SCT), the analysis of the maternal input addressed to them is a neglected topic. Aims The present study aims to analyse the lexical, morphosyntactic, and functional features of the input addressed to children with SCT comparing them with those of the input directed to typically developing children (TD). Methods & Procedures Participants were 38 mothers and their 8‐month‐old children, 19 with SCT and 19 TD children. Maternal utterances, collected during video‐recorded play sessions, have been transcribed and coded. Outcomes & Results No significant differences between groups have been found in the lexical and syntactic characteristics of maternal input. However, considering the input functional features, the proportion of directives and questions was significantly higher in the maternal input addressed to children with SCT than in the input addressed to TD children whereas the opposite pattern was found in the proportion of affect‐salient speech. Conclusions & Implications The awareness of a possible delay in their children's language development could influence the way the mothers speak to them. In particular, the functional features of maternal input could be affected. Support groups for parents of children with SCT at the preverbal stage could be useful to reassure the mothers about their role in their children's language development.

Prosodic features of maternal input to children with sex chromosome trisomies

“…First, we compared the utterances produced by the mothers considering MLU and functional features because of the possible influence of these variables on the prosodic realisation. Our data showed no significant differences between the two groups, differently from what was found previously by Zampini et al (2020) with the same groups of participants. We hypothesise that the difference in the number of utterances considered in the analyses could be the reason for these different results.…”

“…Overall, the prosodic features of the maternal input addressed to children with SCT appeared to be less favourable to enhancing children's language development than that of the input addressed to TD children. These data agree with the findings of our previous study (Zampini et al, 2020), which showed that the mothers of children with SCT tend to address them with a more demanding and directive style than the mothers of TD children. We interpreted these data hypothesising that the awareness that the children have a genetic syndrome, which will probably lead to linguistic problems, could influence the functional features of the maternal input addressed to them.…”

“…the utterance selected for the prosodic analysis). Differently, in the study by Zampini et al (2020), all the utterances produced by mothers during the 15 minutes play session were analysed by considering their functional features.…”

“…Considering the possible influence of the utterance length and function on the acoustic measures, we conducted a preliminary analysis to compare the utterances selected for the two groups considering these two variables (mean utterance length and type of function). As done in our previous study (Zampini et al, 2020), we considered the following input functions: (1) Affect salient utterance, aimed at maintaining the conversation;…”

“…In particular, the mothers of children with SCT seemed to use a more demanding style than those of TD children, producing a lower proportion of affect-salient speech, and a higher proportion of questions and directives than that addressed to TD children. Zampini et al (2020) hypothesised that these differences could be explained considering that the mothers of children with SCT diagnosed before birth are aware of their children's possible future linguistic difficulties. Therefore, this awareness could affect the perception of their children's real skills and lead to adopting different interactive styles.…”