Vocabulary and expressive morpho-syntax in individuals with Down syndrome: Links to narration.

BACKGROUND: Narrative ability is crucial for social participation in everyday and school life but involves different language abilities such as vocabulary and morpho-syntax. This is particularly difficult for individuals who display both language and cognitive impairments. Previous research has identified productive vocabulary as a possible key factor for narrative performance in individuals with Down syndrome. Considering a close connection between lexical and morpho-syntactic performance within language acquisition and the distinct impairments that individuals with Down syndrome display concerning their morpho-syntactic skills, the nature of a relation between vocabulary and narrative skills under the influence of grammatical deficits requires further investigation. METHODS: Narrations were obtained from 28 children and adolescents with Down syndrome (aged 10;0-20;1) using a non-verbal picture book. Narrative abilities were rated using the Narrative Scoring Scheme across seven narrative aspects (including macro- and microstructure). Vocabulary analyses and morpho-lexical context analyses including verb and conjunction enumerations, evaluation of verb position and MLU were conducted. Findings from the transcript analysis have been supplemented with data from standardized language measures evaluating expressive lexical and morpho-syntactic development. A multiple regression analysis was conducted to identify significant predictors for narrative outcome in the participants with Down syndrome. RESULTS: Lexical analyses revealed a high heterogeneity in production of subordinating conjunctions as a link between lexical and morpho-syntactic abilities. Comparisons of standardized and narrative data demonstrated differences in subordinate clause production depending on the elicitation setting. A multiple regression analysis identified the number of different verbs in the narrative task as the most significant predictor for narrative performance in individuals with Down syndrome. DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS: The findings of this study contribute to the knowledge regarding factors that influence narrative performance in individuals with language impairment. A differentiated verb lexicon can be identified as the key ability for reaching advanced narrative skills in participants with Down syndrome. These findings are of clinical relevance for therapeutic and educational support and contribute to an understanding of the relation between strengths in vocabulary and morpho-syntactic weaknesses in individuals with Down syndrome within communicative participation.

[Language Acquisition and Digital Media: State of the Art]. / Spracherwerb und digitale Medien: Eine Bestandsaufnahme.

Nowadays, digital media are already very present in childhood. Due to their language-based content and high attractiveness for children, they may offer a high potential for language promotion. However, in order for their effectiveness as language teachers, the content needs to be relevant for language promotion and to be attentively and repeatedly processed. This introduction sheds light on five criteria to evaluate the language-promoting potential of a digital medium and provides tips for accessibility and usage for children, families, and professionals.

Reported speech in individuals with Down syndrome: First evidence.

INTRODUCTION: Narratives are enriched by taking the perspective of the protagonists, which can be expressed using reported speech. Nevertheless, the use of reported speech is unaddressed internationally among individuals with Down syndrome. METHOD: Narratives of 28 children and adolescents with Down syndrome were collected using a non-verbal picture book. Occurrence and forms of reported speech were analysed and compared to typically-developing children (TD; n = 33). RESULTS: Participants from both populations use reported speech in their narratives with a comparable proportion. Nevertheless, differences appear concerning forms of direct speech with persons with Down syndrome using more free direct speech than TD-children. DISCUSSION: The results suggest that children and adolescents are able to implement the use of reported speech regardless of their syntactic impairments. Concerning the occurring forms of direct speech, the results might point to cognitive impairments that manifest in limited consideration of the interlocutor's knowledge.

Narrative abilities in individuals with Down syndrome: single case-profiles.

Introduction: Narrative abilities are an important part of our everyday lives and social interaction with others. Nevertheless, narration is a complex ability influenced by language and cognition. This makes it difficult for individuals with language and cognitive impairment, such as in children and adolescents with Down syndrome. Previous studies have shown distinct narrative impairments in individuals with Down syndrome; nevertheless, this research was based on overall group means in most cases. To identify individual strengths and weaknesses and to draw conclusions for speech and language therapy, the narrative profile of every participant should be considered equally. Following this approach, the current study aims to describe single case narrative profiles in individuals with Down syndrome. Methods: The narrative transcripts of 28 children and adolescents with Down syndrome (aged 10;0-20;1), based on a non-verbal picture book, were rated using the Narrative Scoring Scheme across seven macro- and microstructural categories. Point scores across the whole group are displayed - nevertheless, the paper specifically addresses the individual narrative profiles of the participants. The participants could be assigned to narrative profile groups which show different characteristics, strengths and weaknesses. Group comparisons and correlations were computed for the relation to language abilities (especially vocabulary) and nonverbal cognitive abilities. Results: The results of the two profile groups with minimal and developing narrative skills differ significantly not only concerning narrative outcomes in the Narrative Scoring Scheme but also for language abilities and developmental stage of nonverbal cognition. Individuals that show floor effects in narrative abilities are characterized by an overall weakness in language and cognition. In contrast, a group of approximately equal size shows distinct strengths in their narrative profiles which are in line with their vocabulary strengths, MLU and nonverbal cognition. Discussion: The current study uses a new approach to identify individual narrative profiles in a group of individuals with Down syndrome. The results of the investigation underline the existence of narrative impairments in many individuals with Down syndrome but also point to individual strengths of the participants. Furthermore, the study outcomes suggest that narrative abilities might be representative for overall language and cognition in individuals with Down syndrome. However, intervention studies addressing narration are missing.

Morphosyntactic development in German-speaking individuals with Down syndrome-longitudinal data.

Introduction: The present study provides longitudinal data on the development of receptive and expressive grammar in children and adolescents with Down syndrome and addresses the role of nonverbal cognitive abilities and verbal short-term memory for morphosyntactic development. Method: Seventeen German-speaking individuals with Down syndrome (aged 4;6-17;1 years at first testing (T1)) were assessed twice, 4;4-6;6 years apart. For a subset of five participants, there was also a third assessment 2 years after the second. Receptive grammar, nonverbal cognition, and verbal short-term memory were tested using standardized measures. For expressive grammar, elicitation tasks were used to assess the production of subject-verb agreement and of wh-questions. Results: At group level, the participants showed a significant increase in grammar comprehension from T1 to T2. However, progress diminished with increasing chronological age. Notable growth could not be observed beyond the age of 10 years.With respect to expressive grammatical abilities, progress was limited to those participants who had mastered verbal agreement inflection around age 10 years. Individuals who did not master verbal agreement by late childhood achieved no progress in producing wh-questions, either.There was an increase in nonverbal cognitive abilities in the majority of participants. Results for verbal short-term memory followed a similar pattern as those for grammar comprehension. Finally, neither nonverbal cognition nor verbal short-term memory were related to changes in receptive or expressive grammar. Discussion: The results point to a slowdown in the acquisition of receptive grammar which starts before the teenage years. For expressive grammar, improvement in wh-question production only occurred in individuals with good performance in subject-verb agreement marking, which suggests that the latter might have a trigger function for further grammatical development in German-speaking individuals with Down syndrome. The study provides no indication that nonverbal cognitive abilities or verbal short-term memory performance determined the receptive or expressive development. The results lead to clinical implications for language therapy.

Theory of Mind in children and adolescents with Down syndrome.

INTRODUCTION: To date, the evidence regarding False Belief (FB) abilities in individuals with Down syndrome (DS) has been both sparse and contradictory. Our study is the first systematic investigation targeting the relation between FB, mental age (MA), syntactic abilities (SA) and verbal short-term memory (VSTM) in individuals with DS so far. METHOD: 27 German-speaking children/adolescents with DS (aged 10;0-20;1 years) completed a location-change FB-task and four standardized measures assessing nonverbal intelligence & MA, VSTM, receptive and productive SA. RESULTS: 37.5 % (n = 9) of our participants passed the FB-task, whereas 62.5 % (n = 15) did not answer the target question correctly. While no significant differences emerged for MA and language abilities in individuals who passed and those who failed FB-testing, VSTM came out as a significantly associated factor for FB-performance in a median split analysis of raw-scores. DISCUSSION: The results suggest that a substantial proportion of individuals with DS is impaired in FB-understanding. In contrast to previous findings on children with developmental disorders such as autism, developmental language deficit or hearing impairment, general and specific SA related to sentence complementation turned out to be of limited relevance for FB-understanding in individuals with DS.

Online-Processing of Grammatical Gender in Noun-Phrase Decoding: An Eye-Tracking Study With Monolingual German 3rd and 4th Graders.

Like many other languages, German employs a linguistic category called "grammatical gender." In gender-marking languages each noun is assigned to a particular gender-class (in German: masculine, feminine or neuter) and other words in a sentence which are grammatically controlled by the noun are marked by particular morphemes according to the noun's gender feature - so called gender agreement. Within psycholinguistic theories of language comprehension, it is often assumed that gender agreement might help to predict the continuation of a sentence on grammatical grounds and to reduce the lexical search space for the next words emerging within the speech signal. Thus, gender agreement relations may provide a means to make the comprehension process more effective and targeted. The aim of the current study was to assess whether monolingual German 3rd and 4th grade primary school children make use of gender agreement in online auditory comprehension and whether different gender cues interact with each other and with semantic information. A language-picture matching task was conducted in which 32 children looked at two pictures while listening to a noun phrase. Due to features of the German gender system, the target picture corresponding with the noun phrase could be predicted shortly after stimulus onset on account of gender agreement relations. The predictive impact of grammatical gender agreement on noun-phrase decoding was investigated by measuring the time course of eye-movements onto the target and distractor pictures. The results confirm and extend previous findings that gender plays a role in predictive online comprehension of gender-marking languages like German, and that even primary school children are able to make use of this grammatical device.