Study tells new story about Down syndrome

Despite a more restricted expressive vocabulary and grammar, individuals with Down syndrome are able to narrate the content of a complex picture story at levels comparable to those of typically developing children with similar comprehension skills, says a new study.

The findings by speech-language pathologist Sally Miles and emeritus professor Robin S. Chapman of the Waisman Center are reported in the February issue of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association’s Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research.

“This study shows the importance of attending to the content of children’s stories, as well as the form,” Miles says. “Narrative may be an excellent clinical tool in helping to close the gap between conceptual skill and expressive language.”

The study shows evidence that the language skills of individuals with Down syndrome continue to improve in the teenage years, and signifies the importance of continuing language intervention for these individuals through adolescence and early adulthood.

Researchers showed a wordless picture story to individuals with Down syndrome as well as to three groups of typically developing children matched for mental age, comprehension of sentence structure, or sentence production. Each of the individuals was asked to provide a narrative of the story, which the researchers then analyzed for expression of plot line, theme, and the protagonists’ misadventures in the story.

The researchers found that the group with Down syndrome had an appreciation of the story similar to that of a group of children with the same comprehension of grammar. In addition, individuals with Down syndrome conveyed more plot line and thematic content, and more of one of the protagonist’s misadventures, than a group with comparable expressive language abilities.

Based on their findings, the researchers suggest that the higher grammatical comprehension skills of the group with Down syndrome, combined with their experiences with stories, may have contributed to the group’s development of higher-level narratives than would be expected based on their abilities to express themselves.

For the full text of this article, “Narrative Content as Described by Individuals with Down Syndrome and Typically Developing Children” (Vol. 45, February 2002), contact Mike Rick, (301) 897-7351, mrick@asha.org, or Mona Thomas, (301) 897-0156, mthomas@asha.org.

An abstract of the article and additional information on children’s language development can also be found at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Web site. The association is the national professional, scientific, and credentialing association for more than 103,000 audiologists, speech-language pathologists, and speech, language, and hearing scientists.