Viejo Aitana, Fernández-Urquiza Maite, Diez-Itza Eliseo
LOGIN Research Group, University of Oviedo, Oviedo, Spain.
Front Psychol. 2025 Jan 28;16:1402121. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1402121. eCollection 2025.
Down syndrome (DS) and Williams syndrome (WS) are genetic neurodevelopmental disorders associated with intellectual disability, showing contrasting linguistic profiles with asymmetries in grammatical (DS weakness/WS strength) vs. pragmatic abilities (DS strength/WS weakness). The aim of the present study was to explore the linguistic profiles of 14 adolescents with DS and WS, and 14 typically developing controls (matched by chronological and verbal age) by comparing the microstructure and macrostructure of narratives and their possible dissociation. Participants watched an episode of the Tom and Jerry cartoon series and were asked to retell it. The videotaped narratives were transcribed and analyzed with the tools of the CHILDES Project and the Pragmatic Evaluation Protocol for Corpora (PREP-CORP). Microstructure was assessed by productivity at the grammatical level (number of utterances) and lexical level (number of word tokens), and complexity at the grammatical level (MLU) and lexical level (number of word types). Macrostructure was assessed by the number of story elements recalled at three levels: scenarios (global), episodes (integrated), and events (detailed). Results confirmed asymmetries in the linguistic profiles of both groups, with relative strengths of adolescents with DS in macrostructure despite relative weaknesses in microstructure. Conversely, adolescents with WS exhibited strengths in narrative microstructure, but failed to show better performance than the DS group in macrostructure. Following regression analyses, microstructure predicted macrostructure in typically developing adolescents, while no association was found between both levels in the profiles of adolescents with WS and DS, which was interpreted as an atypical dissociation.
唐氏综合征（DS）和威廉姆斯综合征（WS）是与智力残疾相关的遗传性神经发育障碍，在语言特征上呈现出对比，在语法能力（DS弱项/WS强项）与语用能力（DS强项/WS弱项）方面存在不对称性。本研究的目的是通过比较叙事的微观结构和宏观结构及其可能的分离情况，探索14名患有DS和WS的青少年以及14名发育正常的对照组（按年龄和语言年龄匹配）的语言特征。参与者观看了一集《猫和老鼠》卡通系列片，并被要求复述。录像的叙事内容被转录，并使用儿童语言数据交流系统项目的工具和语料库语用评估协议（PREP-CORP）进行分析。微观结构通过语法层面的产出能力（话语数量）和词汇层面的产出能力（词元数量），以及语法层面的复杂性（平均语句长度）和词汇层面的复杂性（词类数量）来评估。宏观结构通过在三个层面回忆的故事元素数量来评估：情景（全局）、情节（整合）和事件（细节）。结果证实了两组在语言特征上的不对称性，患有DS的青少年在宏观结构方面相对较强，尽管在微观结构方面相对较弱。相反，患有WS的青少年在叙事微观结构方面表现出优势，但在宏观结构方面未能表现出比DS组更好的成绩。经过回归分析，微观结构预测了发育正常青少年的宏观结构，而在患有WS和DS的青少年的特征中，两个层面之间未发现关联，这被解释为一种非典型的分离。
