Mental State Verb Production as a Measure of Perspective Taking in Narrations of Individuals With Down Syndrome

Abstract

Introduction: Perspective taking is an important ability to enrich narrations by empathizing with a real or fictional character. Mental state verbs (MSV) are a good indicator for this ability as they serve to reflect the mindset that the narrator attributes to a protagonist. Especially syntactic abilities have been argued to be relevant for MSV use. Investigating persons with Down Syndrome (DS) is likely to provide important insights into the relationship of MSV use and syntactic abilities: MSV are mostly used in complex sentence structures, which are a frequent difficulty for individuals with this syndrome. Indeed, previous investigations have found first evidence for impaired MSV production in individuals with DS, indicating a link to syntactic abilities and expressive vocabulary. Our aim was to provide evidence on MSV production and on the syntactic context of MSV production in individuals with DS and to target a possible connection to both cognitive and language abilities using specific language assessments. Typically-developing (pre-)school children were included as a comparison group to identify impaired respectively developmentally-adequate performance.Method: 28 individuals with Down syndrome (aged 10; 0–20; 1 years) participated in a battery of cognitive, narrative and language measures. MSV-performance and syntactical context of MSV use were compared to data from 33 typically-developing children aged 3–9 years. We also analyzed the relationship between MSV production and language performance (vocabulary, syntax measures, mean length of utterance).Results: The total number and types of MSV used were comparable for individuals with DS and TD. Moreover, a syntactic analysis indicated that individuals with DS and TD use MSV in the same syntactic contexts. Nevertheless, the syntactic difficulties of participants with DS are reflected in their frequent use of MSV in sentence-fragments. Correlations over the DS group yielded that syntactic abilities were not decisive for the richness and diversity of MSV in narrations.Conclusion: Our findings suggest a comparable performance in MSV use in individuals with DS and school-aged TD children. The data indicate that MSV production is possible even with an impaired syntax suggesting unimpaired perspective taking abilities in individuals with DS.

Reported speech in individuals with Down syndrome: First evidence

“…This suggests that this stylistic device of linguistic perspective‐shifting is certainly available to people with Down syndrome and can be used independently of possible language impairments. The current study thus provides the first results on this perspective‐shifting‐measure in individuals with Down syndrome and underlines the findings on other perspective‐shifting‐measures (e.g., the use of mental state verbs, Neitzel & Penke, 2021b), which could rather be considered a strength of individuals with Down syndrome.…”

“…Table 1 shows the values of MLU for all participants. However, high values in the group with Down syndrome do not necessarily indicate advanced sentence formation skills in this target group, but rather reflect a morpho‐syntactic impairment with a lot of sentence entanglements, as Neitzel and Penke (2021b) were able to show for the present sample. The participants in the present sample showed strengths in vocabulary and language comprehension in a comprehensive battery of language tests, whereas they showed predominantly impaired performance in the production of complex syntax (results in Neitzel & Penke, 2022).…”

“…Nordqvist (2001a) dated first utterances in direct speech to the age of 2;2 years, whereas indirect speech appeared at 3;0 years in the Swedish‐speaking children studied. In this investigation, 4‐year‐old children were better able to respond to the listeners’ prior knowledge and to linguistically indicate perspective‐shifting than 3‐year‐old participants (full analyses and data of older comparison groups in Neitzel & Penke, 2021b). Results from Li et al (2022) imply that speakers are more likely to use direct than indirect speech in conversational situations to which they feel socially connected, and that the different forms of reported speech might thus go beyond a mere variation of syntactic possibilities.…”

“…Moreover, Neitzel (2022) was able to show that cognitive perspective-taking abilities (in this case Theory of Mind) cannot necessarily be inferred from linguistic perspective-taking performances in a narrative. Due to the limited scope of this brief report, the reader is referred here to Neitzel and Penke (2021b) for general considerations on perspective taking and language impairments in people with Down syndrome. An open question is, however, what means of linguistic perspective-shifting are available to people with Down syndrome in the first place and how can they be adequately investigated.…”

“…Although linguistic perspective‐taking skills constitute a significant aspect of narrative ability, they have hardly been addressed for individuals with Down syndrome. There is some research on the use of mental state verbs in speakers with Down syndrome (including Channell, 2020; Neitzel & Penke, 2021b). Moreover, Neitzel (2022) was able to show that cognitive perspective‐taking abilities (in this case Theory of Mind) cannot necessarily be inferred from linguistic perspective‐taking performances in a narrative.…”