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This study aimed to assess the communicative skills of children and young adults with ring 14 syndrome and linear 14q deletions, investigating the relationships among their language development and their genetic, clinical, psychomotor and behavioural characteristics. Participants were 36 individuals with chromosome 14 aberrations whose parents completed a questionnaire, specifically developed in five languages, to assess their son’s/daughter’s development. Data analysis showed that chronological age does not account for the high individual variability found in the participants’ skills. The comparison between participants with ring 14 syndrome and participants with 14q linear deletions showed that the former were characterised by a higher occurrence of epilepsy, abnormalities of the retina and autism. The participants with smaller amounts of deleted genetic material were those who had a higher level of language development. Because ring 14 syndrome is a rare genetic disease, the collection of data from a large group of individuals could be helpful to create expectations about the possible developmental outcomes of these children.

Several studies in the literature have analyzed language development in children with Down syndrome because their language development delays have been reported to be greater than their cognitive level would suggest (Abbeduto, Warren & Conners, 2007). However, the prosodic characteristics of their language have been minimally investigated (Stojanovik, 2011). The present study aimed to analyze the prosodic skills of children with Down syndrome during a specific developmental stage: the transition between the production of single-word utterances and first sentences. The relationships among linguistic areas were investigated to identify the developmental patterns of language acquisition in this population. The participants were 9 children with Down syndrome who ranged in chronological age from 45 to 63 months and had a vocabulary of approximately 500 words. The children’s spontaneous productions were recorded during observations of play sessions, transcribed and coded in terms of syntactic complexity. Data analyses showed that both lexical and morphological skills were related to the children’s ability to produce multiword utterances. In addition, better prosodic competence was related both to the children’s chronological age and to their ability to produce complex utterances

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 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. Conclusions. 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.

Both sequential reasoning skills and listening text comprehension are complex abilities that have their major development stages during the preschool period. Theoretically, an association between these skills could have its origins in the script construct: the knowledge of how events develop in real life could lead to a better comprehension of temporal and causal relationships. This study addressed the existence of a specific association between children’s performance on a listening comprehension test and their performance on a picture arrangement task that was specifically developed for this project. The participants were 110 preschool children ranging in age from 3 to 6 years. The results show that children’s listening text comprehension ability is mainly explained by their lexical comprehension, but at 3 years of age, their competence in correctly arranging events in a sequential order plays a significant role in explaining children’s comprehension of textual information.

The aim of the present study was to evaluate relationships between early production of gesture, gesture-plus-word combinations and transitional forms on successive lexical and syntactic skills. Twenty-four children interacting with their mothers were observed. We found that complementary gesture-plus-word combinations and transitional forms use at 18 months were related with lexical skill and MLU - but not with utterance complexity - at 24 months; supplementary gesture-plus-word combinations use at 18 months, instead, was related with utterance complexity, but not with lexical skill and MLU. These relationships are explained in terms of increasing communicative competence in the child and also in terms of the adult's contribution to linguistic development. © 2012 John Benjamins Publishing Company

In the present study, the lexical and structural characteristics of the maternal input addressed to 24-month-old children with Down syndrome were compared to the input addressed to two groups of typically developing children; matched for chronological age (CA Group) and lexical skills (Vocabulary Group), respectively. The aim of the present study was to verify whether the characteristics of the language addressed to children with Down syndrome are oversimplified, as found in previous studies, or if they are appropriate for the children’s developmental level. Data analyses show that the lexicon directed toward these children is simpler than that addressed to both of the control groups in terms of vocabulary composition (fewer function words and more onomatopoeic-words/routines) and simpler than that addressed to the CA Group in terms of lexical variability. However, in terms of syntactic complexity, the input is mid-way between the two control groups. In addition, the analysis of maternal imitative utterances shows that the children with Down syndrome receive a lower proportion of imitative utterances than could be expected based on their age.

Attualmente non sono disponibili dei dati di riferimento sullo sviluppo del vocabolario nei bambini con sindrome di Down di lingua italiana. Essendo stata verificata la validità dell’utilizzo del Primo Vocabolario del Bambino (Caselli e Casadio, 1995) (versione italiana del questionario MacArthur-Bates) all’interno di questa popolazione, il presente studio ha lo scopo di valutare la produzione di parole e le relazioni che intercorrono fra questa e le età cronologica e di sviluppo in tale popolazione tramite l’utilizzo di questo strumento. Complessivamente 152 questionari sono stati somministrati ai genitori di bambini con sindrome di Down di età compresa fra 2 e 5 anni. La produzione di parole risulta essere correlata con l’età di sviluppo, ma non con quella cronologica. Inoltre, dal confronto con quanto rilevato nei bambini con sviluppo tipico, lo sviluppo lessicale risulta essere maggiormente rallentato rispetto al loro sviluppo cognitivo., Normative data on vocabulary size of Italian children with Down syndrome are not available at the present time. The principal aim of this study is to assess word production and its relationships with chronological and developmental age in this population, using Il Primo Vocabolario del Bambino (Caselli and Casadio, 1995) (i.e., the Italian version of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories) whose validity in this population has been already demonstrated. An amount of 152 questionnaires has been collected from parents of children with Down syndrome aged two to five years. Word production appears to be correlated to developmental age but not to chronological age. Moreover, in comparison with typically developing children, lexical development seems to lag behind their cognitive development.