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Children with developmental disabilities benefit from their language environment as much as, or even more than, typically developing (TD) children, but maternal language directed to developmentally delayed children is an underinvestigated topic. The purposes of the present study were to compare maternal functional language directed to children with two developmental disabilities--autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and Down syndrome (DS)--with TD children and to investigate relations of maternal functional language with child language skills. Participants were 60 mothers and their children with TD (n = 20), DS (n = 20), or ASD (n = 20). Children's mean developmental age was 24.77 months (SD = 8.47) and did not differ across the groups. Mother and child speech were studied during naturalistic play. We found (a) similarities in maternal functional language directed to the two groups of children with developmental disabilities compared to that directed to TD children and (b) a positive association between subcategories of information-salient speech and child mean length of utterance in TD dyads only. The clinical and developmental implications of these findings are discussed. (Contains 4 tables and 3 figures.)

Child solitary and collaborative mother-child play with 21 children with Down syndrome and 33 mental-age-matched typically developing children were compared. In solitary play, children with Down syndrome showed less exploratory but similar symbolic play compared to typically developing children. From solitary to collaborative play, children with Down syndrome increased their exploratory play, attaining the same level as typically developing children. Pretense significantly increased from solitary to collaborative play only in typically developing children. Differences between mothers' play in the two groups mirrored those between their children. Both groups showed similar attunement and synchrony. Mothers contribute to the play development of children with Down syndrome through their own adaptation to their children's limitations and potentialities.

Background: In children with Down Syndrome (DS), as in other groups of special needs children, development depends crucially on the degree to which parents provide appropriate stimulation and effective support. The majority of recent studies investigating interactions between parents and children with DS have been conducted on mothers. Method: Through observation of child solitary play, child collaborative play with their father, and father play with their child, the current study focused on paternal contributions to child play in association with the effective quality of father-child interactions. A total of 19 children (M chronological age = 35.32 months, SD = 10.35; M mental age = 19.58, SD = 5.43) with DS and their fathers participated in the study. Two 10-min sessions, of child solitary play and collaborative play with their father, were video-recorded. A coding system for exploratory and symbolic play was applied to both sessions, and the Emotional Availability (EA) Scales were independently applied to the collaborative play session as a measure of the effective quality of the father-child interaction. Results: Children showed more symbolic play during collaborative sessions compared with solitary sessions. Bivariate correlations showed positive associations between father play and child exploratory and symbolic play. Cluster analysis identified dyads in low, medium and high EA groups, which differed in terms of each partner's play. Specifically, both fathers and children of high EA dyads were more likely to show more symbolic play and less exploratory play than those with low EA dyads. Conclusions: Our findings enrich the theoretical perspective that dyadic interactions based on emotional involvement may lead to enhanced cognitive functioning in children with DS.