Speech Science Research Centre, Musselburgh, UK.
Int J Lang Commun Disord. 2010 Jan-Feb;45(1):83-95. doi: 10.3109/13682820902745453.
Children and young people with Down's syndrome present with deficits in expressive speech and language, accompanied by strengths in vocabulary comprehension compared with non-verbal mental age. Intelligibility is particularly low, but whether speech is delayed or disordered is a controversial topic. Most studies suggest a delay, but no studies explore the relationship between cognitive or language skills and intelligibility.
This study sought to determine whether severity of speech disorder correlates with language and cognitive level and to classify the types of errors, developmental or non-developmental, that occur in the speech of children and adolescents with Down's syndrome.
METHODS & PROCEDURES: Fifteen children and adolescents with Down's syndrome (aged 9-18 years) were recruited. Participants completed a battery of standardized speech, language and cognitive assessments. The phonology assessment was subject to phonological and phonetic analyses. Results from each test were correlated to determine relationships.
OUTCOME & RESULTS: Individuals with Down's syndrome present with deficits in receptive and expressive language that are not wholly accounted for by their cognitive delay. Receptive vocabulary is a strength in comparison with expressive and receptive language skills, but it was unclear from the findings whether it is more advanced compared with non-verbal cognitive skills. The majority of speech errors were developmental in nature, but all of the children with Down's syndrome showed at least one atypical or non-developmental speech error.
CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS: Children with Down's syndrome present with speech disorders characterized by atypical, and often unusual, errors alongside many developmental errors. A lack of correlation between speech and cognition or language measures suggests that the speech disorder in Down's syndrome is not simply due to cognitive delay. Better differential diagnosis of speech disorders in Down's syndrome is required, allowing interventions to target the specific disorder in each individual.
唐氏综合征儿童和青少年在表达性言语和语言方面存在缺陷，与非言语心理年龄相比，词汇理解能力较强。可理解性特别低，但言语是延迟还是障碍是一个有争议的话题。大多数研究表明存在延迟，但没有研究探讨认知或语言技能与可理解性之间的关系。
本研究旨在确定言语障碍的严重程度是否与语言和认知水平相关，并对唐氏综合征儿童和青少年言语中出现的发育性或非发育性错误类型进行分类。
招募了 15 名唐氏综合征儿童和青少年（年龄 9-18 岁）。参与者完成了一系列标准化的言语、语言和认知评估。语音评估受到语音和语音分析的影响。每个测试的结果都进行了相关性分析以确定关系。
唐氏综合征个体在接受性和表达性语言方面存在缺陷，这些缺陷不能完全归因于他们的认知延迟。与表达性和接受性语言技能相比，接受性词汇量是一个优势，但从研究结果来看，与非言语认知技能相比，它是否更先进还不清楚。大多数言语错误是发育性的，但所有唐氏综合征儿童都表现出至少一种非典型或非发育性言语错误。
唐氏综合征儿童的言语障碍表现为非典型的、通常不寻常的错误，同时伴有许多发育性错误。言语和认知或语言测量之间缺乏相关性表明，唐氏综合征中的言语障碍不仅仅是由于认知延迟所致。唐氏综合征的言语障碍需要更好的鉴别诊断，以便为每个个体的特定障碍进行干预。
