Social familiarity and communication in Down syndrome

The communication of eight Down syndrome individuals with strangers and with acquaintances was analysed. The spontaneity of their speech and the communicative demands they made on their audiences were found to be low. Some of them broke rules of conversation by not answering questions. Surprisingly, their speech was not more spontaneous with acquaintances. It was further observed that Down syndrome individuals' conversations were in the main restricted to comments on current actions. However, different postures are adopted and different body mobility exhibited depending on partner familiarity. It is concluded that Down syndrome persons prefer to express intimacy/social distance in non-verbal modalities.