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This study investigated the development of the pointing-vocal coupling system. We were interested in the infants' behavior to attune prosody with pointing intentions. Twenty-five children were involved at 12, 15, and 18 months of age in an experimental procedure devised to elicit imperative and declarative pointing. Pointing, vocality associated with pointing, and the prosody of that vocality were analyzed. A significant increase in the coupling of pointing and vocality was observed from 12 to 15 months, and in the ability to differentiate prosody with respect to the intention of the gesture from 15 to 18 months. Also, the infants who pointed declaratively at 12 months were likely to couple declarative pointing with vocality at 15 months, and the infants who coupled at 15 months were likely to differentiate prosody by the pointing intention at 18 months. Results suggest that the match between prosody and pointing intentions emerges gradually during the first half of the second year of life. They also show a relationship between earlier and later pointing-vocal coupling, and a role for declarative communication in promoting that progression. Overall, our study supports the view of intentional communication as a time-based and context-based developmental process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Although children with Down's syndrome show some delays in each area of language development, their morphosyntactic competence appears to be more severely compromised than their lexical skills and, therefore, they are frequently mentioned as an example of dissociation between grammar and lexicon. Aims: The principal aim of the present study was to compare the lexical and syntactic development of Italian children with Down's syndrome with that of typically developing children, considering their spontaneous production. Particular attention was given to the relationships between these linguistic areas and the transition from single-word utterances to multiword combinations (that is, transitional forms). Methods & Procedures: Twenty-four children participated in the study: twelve with Down's syndrome and twelve typically developing children. On average, the children with Down's syndrome participating in the study had a vocabulary size of about 450 words; and their mean chronological age was 54 months, whereas their mean developmental age was 30 months. The criteria for inclusion in the typically developing children group were a mean vocabulary size similar to that of the participants with Down's syndrome and a mean chronological age equivalent to the mean developmental age of the children with Down's syndrome. Each child's spontaneous verbal production was assessed during a parent-child play session. Data analyses focused on both lexical variables (type and tokens, vocabulary composition) and syntactic variables (frequency and types of transitional forms, frequency of utterances with different degree of complexity, and argument structure of verbs). Outcomes & Results: The vocabulary composition of the children with Down's syndrome appeared to be simpler than that of the typically developing children at the same lexical size. Children with Down's syndrome used a higher number of transitional forms, but their production of multi-word utterances was less frequent; they were able to use word combinations, but they produced a low number of morphologically complete sentences. In addition, a significant relationship emerged between the development of the lexicon and the production of multi-word utterances. Conclusions & Implications: Children with Down's syndrome seem to have greater difficulties in expressing sentences in a grammatically correct form, though they are able to combine words. The theoretical relevance of the study lies in the fact that individuating a significant relationship between lexical and syntactic skills supports the hypothesis of interdependence between these two language domains; the practical relevance of the results lies in the fact that intervening on lexical abilities could have a beneficial effect on syntactic skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Children with Down's syndrome seem to show a preference for the use of gestural rather than vocal productions during the first stages of language development. This 'gestural advantage' could actually be due to a developmental strategy used to compensate the difficulties in verbal production that are typical of language development in this population. Aims: The principal aim of the present study is to analyse the relationships between gesture production and vocabulary development in children with Down's syndrome, verifying the existence of any similarities with the processes that characterize typical development. Methods & Procedures: Twenty 36-month-old Italian children with Down's syndrome participated in the study. Each child's spontaneous gestural and vocal production was assessed during a mother-and-child play session. Their psychomotor development was evaluated using the Brunet-Lezine Scale of Infant Development; and their vocabulary size, with regards both production and comprehension, was assessed using the Italian version of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory (CDI). Following a longitudinal perspective, parents were requested to complete the inventory at 6 months after the first evaluation (i.e., at 42 months). Data analyses focused both on the concurrent relations of gesture production, vocabulary size and psychomotor development, and on the longitudinal relations between gesture production and subsequent vocabulary development. Outcomes & Results: As regards concurrent relationships, gesture production appeared to be related both to psychomotor development and to word comprehension, but not to word production. Nevertheless, as regards longitudinal relationships, gesture production at 36 months was significantly correlated to the subsequent vocabulary production, assessed at 42 months using the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory (CDI), though this relationship appeared to be mediated by word comprehension. Conclusions & Implications: Two processes in the gesture production of children with Down's syndrome appear to be similar to those previously identified in typically developing children: (1) the role of gestures as a 'bridge' between word comprehension and word production; and (2) the predictive role of gestures, in association with comprehension, on vocabulary development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Children who have reached the age of 2 years without having acquired a 50‐word vocabulary and/or who use no word combinations are referred to in the literature as ‘Late Talkers’. Research has not yet identified the factors that cause slow development of expressive language; in particular, relatively little research has been carried out on the characteristics of the maternal linguistic input received by Late Talkers. In fact, the majority of studies in this area have focused principally on the mothers' semantic, pragmatic and interactive verbal behaviour. Aims: The objective was to verify whether the input addressed to a group of Late Talkers differs to that addressed to a group of typically developing peers. It was expected that there would be differences in the prosodic and structural/lexical properties of the input, which by creating a ‘less than optimal environment’ for language acquisition processes, could affect the children's rate of linguistic development. Methods & Procedures: The spontaneous maternal speech of nine Italian‐speaking mothers of late‐talking toddlers (LT) at 20 months of age was examined and compared with that of nine mothers of age‐matched children with typical language development (Late Starters). Data were collected during video‐recorded play sessions, which were transcribed and coded based on the structural–lexical and acoustical characteristics of the mothers' speech. Group differences were tested for the following variables: number of utterances per minute, mean number of words per utterance (MLUw), number of nouns per minute, number of different nouns per minute, common nouns as a percentage of overall words, type/token ratio for common nouns, one‐word utterances as a percentage of the total number of utterances, one‐word utterances formed by a common noun as a percentage of the total number of utterances, mean syllable duration, duration of the final syllable of the utterance, F 0 maximum (the highest F 0 in the utterance), F 0 minimum (the lowest F 0 in the utterance) and F 0 range (by subtracting F 0 min from F 0 max ). Outcomes & Results: The mothers of LT produced common nouns and mark nouns by a pitch peak with a significantly lower frequency than the mothers of the children with typical language development. The mothers of LT also used flat pitch contours more often than the mothers of the typically developing peers. Conclusions: The study provides evidence that maternal input addressed to Late Talkers can contribute to slowing the process of language acquisition. Based on these findings, additional investigations that examine the contribution of maternal verbal behaviour to the development of language delay are warranted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]