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The present study examines narrative competence and its relationships with syntactic and prosodic skills in preschool children. The narrative skills of 30 typically developing Italian children were assessed during their first year of kindergarten attendance (T1) and again one year later (T2). A picture book was used to elicit children's narratives. All stories were examined for narrative competence, syntactic complexity and prosody. The results are discussed in the context of the relationships between prosody and the other linguistic skills, considering that the children who were more proficient storytellers and exhibited better syntactic construction were generally less able to produce their utterances within a single melodic contour. Therefore, the linguistic and cognitive abilities required by a storytelling task may negatively influence a child's ability to produce sentences within a single melodic contour.

Background: Research findings on vocabulary development in children with Down syndrome are inconsistent. This study aimed to analyse the developmental trend of vocabulary growth in children with Down syndrome and the relationships between vocabulary and chronological and developmental age. Method: Children's vocabulary size was assessed by a parental report (the Italian version of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories [CDI]). A longitudinal study, involving 18 children with Down syndrome, and a cross-sectional study, involving 27 children with Down syndrome, were conducted. Results: The variability in children's vocabulary size increased from a chronological age of 36 months. Both vocabulary size (from 36 months) and developmental level (from 42 months) were significant predictors of lexical outcomes at 48 months. A comparison with normative data showed that children with Down syndrome had a significantly lower vocabulary size than typically developing children at the same developmental age. Conclusion: Although there are similarities with vocabulary growth in typically developing children, lexical development in children with Down syndrome appears to lag behind their cognitive development.

The present study focussed on a specific type of rare genetic condition: chromosome 14 deletions. Children with this genetic condition often show developmental delays and brain and neurological problems, although the type and severity of symptoms varies depending on the size and location of the deleted genetic material. The specific aim of the present study was to describe the developmental trajectories of language skills in a group of children with linear 14q deletions. Four children with an interstitial deletion of the long arm of chromosome 14 were followed for 1 year. Data collected from psychomotor and linguistic assessments highlight a large individual variability. Considering the children's genetic and clinical conditions, findings revealed that the size of the deleted area is not related to outcome. However, the developmental trajectories of language development are deeply influenced by the presence of clinical conditions, such as autism spectrum disorders. (Contains 2 tables and 5 figures.)

This study analysed the early linguistic development of Italian pre-term children. Samples of spontaneous pre-linguistic and verbal production were recorded at 12 and 18 months of age from two groups of children: 24 pre-term children and 15 full-term children. The Italian version of the MacArthur-Bates Questionnaire was administered at 24 months of age. Comparisons between these two groups reveal differences in many aspects of phonetic and phonological development, such as consonantal inventory at 12 and 18 months of age and syllabic babbling complexity at 18 months of age. Results evidenced that birth weight was related with phonological skills exhibited at 18 months of age, and these skills in turn are related with vocabulary size at 24 months of age. Data are discussed within a theoretical framework that hypothesizes that early phonetic abilities have long-lasting effects on the process of language acquisition. (Contains 7 tables and 2 notes.)

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. (Contains 4 tables.)

The vocabulary development of 24 Italian children aged between 1;4 and 1;6 at the beginning of the study was longitudinally monitored on a monthly basis using the Italian version of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory drawn up by their mothers. This study analyzes data from children for whom two sampling stages were available; the first corresponding to a vocabulary size as close as possible to 200 words (mean 217, range 167-281), the second to a vocabulary size ranging from 400 to 650 words (mean 518, range 416-648). The children's vocabulary composition was analyzed by calculating, for each sampling stage, the percentage of common nouns, verbs and closed-class words. The increase in percentage points of the various lexical items between the first and second sampling stages was also analyzed. Data confirmed the predominance of nouns over verbs and closed-class words at both sampling stages, while verbs and closed-class words showed a higher percentage increase than nouns. The results provide evidence that children who reached the first sampling point at an earlier age had a higher percentage of nouns than children who reached the same stage at an older age. However, in the passage from the first to the second sampling point no relationship emerged between a style of acquisition based on the acquisition of nouns and an increase in the rate of vocabulary growth. [The preparation of this paper was supported by a grant from the Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione.]

This follow-up study compares cognitive and language aspects of a group of Italian children ages 4-6 years, who had shown delayed expressive language abilities at 24 months of age (late talkers), with those of a group of children with a history of normal expressive language development (average talkers). Children were given a battery of cognitive-neuropsychological tests to assess grammatical comprehension, vocabulary development, verbal short-term memory, phonological awareness, planning and visuomotor coordination, and attention and impulsiveness. No differences were found in the results between the two groups in the domains of attention, impulsiveness, and visuomotor planning, but in the domain of syntactic competence late talkers developed particular difficulties in the comprehension of passive negative sentences compared to average talkers. Late talkers also performed significantly worse on the nonword repetition task, which measures abilities closely connected with verbal short-term memory and phonological awareness.