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The aim of this study was to investigate comprehension and production of prosody in a group of nine children with Down syndrome (DS) and to compare their performance to two control groups: one matched to the DS group on chronological age (CA group) and the other one matched to the DS group on receptive language and non-verbal abilities (MA group). Prosody was assessed using the computerised battery “Profiling Elements of Prosody for Speech and Communication” which assesses both prosody form and prosody function. The results showed that the DS group scored significantly lower than the CA matched group on all aspects of prosody under investigation. The DS group scored significantly lower than the MA group on the production of affect and on the production of pre-final narrow focus, and on all four tasks assessing prosody form. The DS group scored, on the whole, significantly higher on the comprehension prosody tasks than on the production ones. This pattern mirrored the one found in the general DS language profile which is characterised with strengths in language comprehension and weaknesses in language production. Interestingly, the receptive language abilities of the DS group did not seem to be related to their prosodic abilities, suggesting that prosody may be an independent cognitive domain.

This study investigated the development of three aspects of linguistic prosody in a group of children with Williams syndrome compared to typically developing children. The prosodic abilities investigated were: (1) the ability to understand and use prosody to make specific words or syllables stand out in an utterance (focus); (2) the ability to understand and use prosody to disambiguate complex noun phrases (chunking); (3) the ability to understand and use prosody to regulate conversational behaviour (turn-end). The data were analysed using a cross-sectional developmental trajectory approach. The results showed that, relative to chronological age, there was a delayed onset in the development of the ability of children with WS to use prosody to signal the most important word in an utterance (the focus function). Delayed rate of development was found for all the other aspects of expressive and receptive prosody under investigation. However, when non-verbal mental age was taken into consideration, there were no differences between the children with WS and the controls neither with the onset nor with the rate of development for any of the prosodic skills under investigation apart from the ability to use prosody in order to regulate conversational behaviour. We conclude that prosody is not a ‘preserved’ cognitive skill in WS. The genetic factors, development in other cognitive domains and environmental influences affect developmental pathways and as a result, development proceeds along an atypical trajectory.

Aims The present study investigated whether children with Williams syndrome (WS) produced a higher number of different word roots and low-frequency words in spontaneous speech in a topic controlled setting. Method A group of children with WS was compared to a group of typically developing children matched for chronological age (CA), and a group of typically developing children matched for receptive language abilities (LA). A further comparison was made between the WS group and a group of children matched for non-verbal abilities (NA). Spontaneous speech was elicited using a narrative task. The data were analysed using three different measures of lexical diversity. The results revealed that the children with WS neither produce a higher number of different word roots nor significantly more low-frequency items in comparison to the CA, LA and NA matched participants. Furthermore, language and non-verbal abilities did not predict the number of different and low frequency words used by the typically developing children, however in the WS group non-verbal abilities predicted the number of low-frequency words and receptive language skills predicted the number of different words produced. It is concluded that individuals with WS do not have unusual vocabularies and that the subdomain of language, lexical semantics, does not seem to be an independent cognitive skill.

Research on social communication skills in individuals with Williams syndrome has been inconclusive, with some arguing that these skills are a relative strength and others that they are a weakness. The aim of the present study was to investigate social interaction abilities in a group of children with WS, and to compare them to a group of children with specific language impairment and a group of typically developing children. Semi-structured conversations were conducted and 100–150 utterances were selected for analysis in terms of exchange structure, turn taking, information transfer and conversational inadequacy. The statistical analyses showed that the children with WS had difficulties with exchange structure and responding appropriately to the interlocutor's requests for information and clarification. They also had significant difficulties with interpreting meaning and providing enough information for the conversational partner. Despite similar language abilities with a group of children with specific language impairment, the children with WS had different social interaction skills, which suggests that they follow an atypical trajectory of development and their neurolinguistic profile does not directly support innate modularity.

It has been argued that Williams Syndrome (WS) and Specific Language Impairment (SLI) show developmental double dissociations. This has been put forward as an argument that language is a module which is biologically programmed and develops independently of other cognitive abilities. However there have been very few studies which have directly compared the two populations. In this article we compare individuals with WS with individuals with SLI on a number of verbal and non-verbal standardised tests as well as on their language abilities in a narrative task. The participants with WS performed similarly to the participants with SLI on the verbal standardised tests and in the narrative task (there were no significant differences between the two groups of participants) although they performed significantly lower on the non-verbal standardised tests in comparison to the participants with SLI. The results suggest that although there are dissociations between WS and SLI in the non-verbal domain, the two populations are very similar in the domain of morpho-syntax, hence there is no support for developmental double dissociations between these two populations.