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Vocabulary and Syntactic Development in Japanese Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder and Down Syndrome Accompanied
Manami Koizumi1,2, Waka Kobayashi2, Shuhei Ogawa3
1Institute of Human Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan.
Journal of Intellectual Disability Research : JIDR
|December 2, 2025
Summary
Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and Down syndrome (DS) show typical vocabulary skills but struggle with syntax, indicating a need for targeted grammatical support in educational and clinical settings.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Linguistics
- Clinical Psychology
Background:
- Children with intellectual disability (ID) often exhibit delayed language development, particularly in morphology and syntax.
- Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and Down syndrome (DS) are common conditions associated with ID and language impairments.
- Understanding the relationship between vocabulary and syntax is crucial for effective language intervention.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the link between vocabulary and syntactic development in children with ASD and DS.
- To compare language development in children with ASD and DS to typically developing (TD) children, controlling for mental age (MA).
- To identify specific areas of language difficulty in children with ASD and DS.
Main Methods:
- Participants included children with ID (ASD and DS) and TD children, matched for MA.
- Language skills assessed included vocabulary comprehension and expression, and syntactic comprehension and expression.
- Statistical analyses examined group differences and within-group associations between vocabulary and syntax.
Main Results:
- No significant differences were found in vocabulary comprehension or expression between groups.
- Children with ASD and DS performed significantly lower on syntactic comprehension and expression tasks compared to MA-matched TD children.
- Difficulties were noted in understanding grammatical morphemes and grammatical knowledge in children with ASD and DS.
Conclusions:
- Vocabulary development in children with ASD and DS was comparable to TD peers, but syntactic development lagged behind expectations based on MA.
- Children with ASD and DS demonstrated specific challenges with syntax, particularly grammatical morphology.
- Educational and clinical interventions should focus on enhancing syntactic skills, especially grammatical aspects, for Japanese children with ASD and DS.
Keywords:
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