Lexical verb diversity in children with Down syndrome
1Department of Communication Sciences, 850 Bolton Road, Unit 1085, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut 06269, USA. bgrela@uconn.edu
Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics
|August 1, 2002
Summary
Children with Down syndrome (DS) exhibit comparable lexical verb use to typically developing peers but show greater lexical diversity. This highlights a relative strength in expressive vocabulary for children with DS.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Linguistics
- Genetics
Background:
- Children with Down syndrome (DS) often present with developmental delays.
- Expressive vocabulary development in DS is an area of ongoing research.
- Previous studies suggest potential strengths in vocabulary compared to syntax.
Purpose of the Study:
- To compare lexical diversity in children with Down syndrome and typically developing children.
- To investigate verb usage patterns, including lexical and mental state verbs.
- To identify relative strengths in expressive vocabulary in children with DS.
Main Methods:
- Analysis of language transcripts from seven children with Down syndrome and seven typically developing children.
- Participants were matched for Mean Length of Utterance (MLU).
- Measures included percentage of utterances with lexical verbs, verb tokens, mean verbs per utterance (MVU), verb types, and mental state verbs.
Main Results:
- Children with Down syndrome produced lexical verbs with similar frequency to controls.
- Children with Down syndrome demonstrated a greater variety (number of types) of lexical verbs.
- Both groups produced an equal number of mental state verbs.
Conclusions:
- Children with Down syndrome show a relative strength in expressive vocabulary, particularly in lexical verb diversity.
- Findings support the hypothesis of a dissociation between syntactic and vocabulary development in DS.
- Lexical diversity may be a key area of linguistic strength for children with Down syndrome.
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