Department of Speech and Hearing Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 901 S. Sixth Street, Champaign, IL, 61820, USA.
MIND Institute, University of California, Davis, 2825 50th Street, Sacramento, CA, 95817, USA.
Res Dev Disabil. 2017 Dec;71:98-108. doi: 10.1016/j.ridd.2017.10.002. Epub 2017 Oct 13.
We examined inferential language use by youth with Down syndrome (DS) in the context of narrative storytelling relative to younger typically developing (TD) children and same-aged peers with fragile X syndrome (FXS) matched on nonverbal cognitive ability level. Participants' narratives were coded for the use of different types of inferential language. Participants with DS used proportionately less inferential language overall relative to their counterparts with TD or FXS, although mean length of utterance accounted for group differences observed for the DS-TD group comparison only. Patterns of inferential language use varied across inferential subtypes and across participant groups, with mean length of utterance playing a significant role in group differences. These findings suggest potential syndrome specificity to the DS phenotype regarding impairments in inferential language use that can be partially explained by level of expressive syntactic ability and should be considered in future research. Clinical interventions within the DS population, therefore, should target to some extent the use of inferential language and complex sentence structure.
我们研究了唐氏综合征（DS）青少年在叙事故事讲述情境中使用推论性语言的情况，将其与具有相似非言语认知能力水平的脆性 X 综合征（FXS）的年轻典型发育（TD）儿童和同龄同伴进行了比较。参与者的叙述被编码为使用不同类型的推论性语言。与 TD 或 FXS 对照组相比，DS 组的参与者总体上使用的推论性语言比例较少，尽管只有在 DS-TD 组比较中，言语长度平均值才能解释观察到的组间差异。推论性语言使用模式因推论性亚型和参与者群体而异，言语长度平均值在组间差异中起着重要作用。这些发现表明，在推论性语言使用方面，DS 表型存在潜在的综合征特异性，这种特异性可以部分通过表达性句法能力水平来解释，这在未来的研究中应该加以考虑。因此，在 DS 人群中进行临床干预时，应在一定程度上针对推论性语言和复杂句子结构的使用。
