Centre for Developmental Disability Health Victoria, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.
Res Dev Disabil. 2010 Mar-Apr;31(2):568-76. doi: 10.1016/j.ridd.2009.12.009. Epub 2010 Jan 4.
Studies into the effects of ageing on language in adults with Down syndrome (DS) have tended to rely on measures that lack sensitivity to change because they fail to explore across linguistic domains or rely on proxy reports. The study aim was to use measures of receptive and expressive language from studies of younger individuals with DS in exploring relationships across linguistic and associated skills, and age in young to older adults. Fifty-five adults (aged 19-58 years), 10 with a diagnosis of or signs of early stage Alzheimer's Disease (AD), provided data on measures of functioning associated with AD, non-verbal cognition, receptive language (which provided a measure of mental age), receptive and expressive language, and short term auditory and visual memory. The first order correlation between the measure of AD and CA was significant; but not when the 10 participants with AD were removed from the analysis. Significant negative correlations were obtained between CA and all other measures; small to large significant positive correlations were found amongst the other measures. Partial correlations were conducted to remove the potential effects of AD and IQ (the latter measured by a test of non-verbal cognition). Remaining significant correlations were between auditory short term memory and all other included measures, expressive language and all other included measures, and CA and auditory short term memory and expressive language. The results indicate that deterioration with age in this cross-sectional study was accounted for largely by the presence of AD. The exceptions were for auditory short term memory and expressive language. The findings may reflect an underlying deficit in auditory short term memory for adults with DS, as has been found in previous research of children and adolescents. The implications are discussed in terms of the importance of including comprehensive measures of receptive and expressive language and the need to account for the presence of AD in studies of cognitive decline associated with ageing in DS.
对唐氏综合征（DS）成人语言衰老效应的研究往往依赖于缺乏敏感性的衡量标准，因为这些标准未能探索语言领域或依赖代理报告。本研究旨在使用年轻 DS 患者研究中的接受性和表达性语言测量来探索语言和相关技能以及年轻到老年成人年龄之间的关系。55 名成年人（年龄 19-58 岁），其中 10 名患有或有早期阿尔茨海默病（AD）迹象，提供了与 AD、非言语认知、接受性语言（提供心理年龄衡量标准）、接受性和表达性语言以及短期听觉和视觉记忆相关的功能测量数据。AD 与 CA 的一阶相关性显著；但当从分析中去除 10 名 AD 参与者时，这种相关性就不显著了。CA 与所有其他测量值之间存在显著负相关；在其他测量值之间发现了小到中等显著的正相关。进行偏相关以消除 AD 和 IQ（后者通过非言语认知测试测量）的潜在影响。保留的显著相关性存在于听觉短期记忆与所有其他包含的测量值、表达性语言与所有其他包含的测量值之间，以及 CA 与听觉短期记忆和表达性语言之间。研究结果表明，在这项横断面研究中，年龄的恶化在很大程度上是由 AD 的存在引起的。例外的是听觉短期记忆和表达性语言。这些发现可能反映了 DS 成人听觉短期记忆的潜在缺陷，正如以前对儿童和青少年的研究中发现的那样。研究结果讨论了包括接受性和表达性语言综合测量的重要性，以及在与衰老相关的认知衰退研究中需要考虑 AD 存在的重要性。
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