Mundy P, Kasari C, Sigman M, Ruskin E
Department of Psychology, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, USA.
J Speech Hear Res. 1995 Feb;38(1):157-67. doi: 10.1044/jshr.3801.157.
Many children with Down syndrome display asynchrony in development with the acquisition of language preceding at a slower pace than the acquisition of other cognitive skills. Recent research suggests that the expressive language delays that are displayed by these children may be associated with an earlier disturbance in the development of nonverbal requesting skills (Mundy, Sigman, Kasari, & Yirmiya, 1988; Smith & von Tetzchner, 1986). To test this hypothesis, a longitudinal study of 37 children with Down syndrome and 25 children with normal development was conducted. The results of the study indicated that this sample of children with Down syndrome exhibited a disturbance in nonverbal requesting. Furthermore, individual differences in nonverbal requesting were associated with the subsequent development of expressive language in these children. This association was observed even after taking into account initial variance in developmental level and language status. These data suggested that some of the processes involved in the expressive language delay of children with Down syndrome were not unique to linguistic development. Instead, some aspects of this delay appeared to be associated with problems in an earlier nonverbal phase of communication development. Additionally, the results suggested that measures of nonverbal communication skills also made a unique contribution to the prediction of language development among children with normal development. These data supported the hypothesis that the acquisition of nonverbal communication skills provides an important foundation for the emergence of language in atypical as well as typical development.
许多唐氏综合征患儿在发育过程中表现出不同步，语言习得的速度比其他认知技能的习得速度要慢。最近的研究表明，这些患儿表现出的表达性语言延迟可能与非言语请求技能发展早期的紊乱有关（蒙迪、西格曼、卡萨里和伊尔米亚，1988年；史密斯和冯·特茨chner，1986年）。为了验证这一假设，对37名唐氏综合征患儿和25名发育正常的儿童进行了一项纵向研究。研究结果表明，这个唐氏综合征患儿样本在非言语请求方面表现出紊乱。此外，非言语请求方面的个体差异与这些患儿随后的表达性语言发展有关。即使在考虑了发育水平和语言状态的初始差异之后，这种关联仍然存在。这些数据表明，唐氏综合征患儿表达性语言延迟所涉及的一些过程并非语言发展所特有。相反，这种延迟的某些方面似乎与早期非言语交流发展阶段的问题有关。此外，结果表明，非言语交流技能的测量对正常发育儿童的语言发展预测也有独特贡献。这些数据支持了这样一种假设，即非言语交流技能的习得为非典型和典型发育中语言的出现提供了重要基础。
