Elena Checa

The Acquisition of Productive Vocabulary in Spanish Children with Down Syndrome.

Abstract Background It is generally assumed that children with Down syndrome (DS) present a deficit in lexical production relative to their cognitive abilities. However, the literature on this topic has recently shown several contradictory results. In addition, most studies only consider vocabulary production in its vocal modality. However it is also necessary to take into account gesture production, since this is a strength in children with DS. Our main purpose in this study, therefore, was to investigate the relationship between cognitive development and vocabulary size in both its vocal and gestural modalities in a broad sample of Spanish children with DS. Method Participants in the study were 66 children with DS and 66 children with typical development (TD), with a mental age (MA) of 14–28 months (divided into five groups with a MA of 14–16, 17–19, 20–22, 23–25 and 26–28 months). Children were matched on the basis of their gender and MA. Productive vocabularies were collected using an adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates CDI for children with DS. Results In vocal modality, the number of words produced by children with DS and children with TD is similar. As in previous studies, our data confirmed that gestural communication is superior in children with DS. However, when words and gestures are combined, the performance of both groups of children is practically equal. Conclusion Our results do not support a specific dissociation between cognitive and lexical development in children with DS.

The development of vocabulary in Spanish children with Down syndrome: Comprehension, production, and gestures

Abstract Background Our main purpose was to compare the lexical development of Spanish children with Down syndrome (DS) and children with typical development (TD) to investigate the relationship between cognitive and vocabulary development in comprehension and oral and gestural production. Method Participants were 186 children with DS and 186 children with TD, with a mental age (MA) of 8–29 months and matched on gender and MA. Information about vocabulary was obtained using a new Spanish adaptation of the MacArthur–Bates CDI for children with DS. Results No significant differences in oral production were found. Lexical comprehension and gestural production of children with DS were superior. Similar to children with TD, gestural production in children with DS decreased as oral production increased. Conclusion Our study provides evidence to support that lexical comprehension and gesture production are strengths in children with DS. With respect to oral production, our results do not support a specific dissociation between cognitive and lexical development.

Early grammatical development in Spanish children with Down syndrome.

The objective of this work was to analyze morphosyntactic development in a wide sample of children with Down syndrome (DS) (n = 92) and children with typical development (TD) (n = 92) with a mental age (MA) of 20 to 29 months. Children were individually matched for gender and MA (Analysis 1) and for vocabulary size (Analysis 2). Information about morphosyntax was obtained using an adaptation of the CDI for children with DS. In both analyses, the number of children with DS and with TD who combined words was similar. Analysis 1 showed that children with DS produced shorter utterances, with less morphosyntactic complexity and less morphological suffixes than children with TD, despite having the same mental age. The developmental pattern was similar, although slower in children with DS. Analysis 2 showed that the performance of children with DS was lower than the performance of children with TD in relation to morphosyntactic complexity and morphological suffixes.

La adquisición del vocabulario en niños con síndrome de Down: datos normativos y tendencias de desarrollo

Resumen El objetivo del presente trabajo es ofrecer los primeros datos normativos en español sobre el desarrollo del vocabulario, tanto en comprensión, como en producción oral y gestual, en niños con síndrome de Down (SD). Participaron 230 niños con SD de entre 8 y 29 meses de edad mental divididos en 11 grupos. Para medir el vocabulario se empleó el Inventario de Desarrollo Comunicativo MacArthur-Bates (CDI) adaptado al perfil evolutivo de los niños con SD. La comprensión del vocabulario fue superior a la producción oral. En ambos casos, se apreció un aumento progresivo, más gradual en la comprensión y más pronunciado en la producción oral. La tendencia encontrada en la producción gestual era diferente. Al principio, los gestos van aumentando lentamente, a partir de la edad de 20–21 meses se mantienen en un nivel similar y en los últimos grupos de edad comienzan a disminuir. Este descenso parece ir asociado al aumento de la producción oral. Se discute la relevancia de los datos normativos ofrecidos para la investigación, la evaluación y la intervención.

Adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories for Spanish Children With Down Syndrome: Validity and Reliability Data for Vocabulary

PURPOSE The MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories are widely used to study early language and communicative development. We recently developed a Spanish version for children with Down syndrome (the CDI-Down) adapted to their particular profile of linguistic and communicative development. The principal aims of this study are to assess the concurrent validity and test-retest reliability of the vocabulary section of this adaptation. METHOD Validation for productive vocabulary (Study 1) was achieved by correlating CDI-Down scores on expressive vocabulary and measures on the basis of spontaneous speech samples (n = 29). Validation for receptive vocabulary (Study 2) was achieved by correlating CDI-Down scores on receptive vocabulary and measures derived from language items of the Brunet-Lézine Scale (Josse, 1997; n = 70). Reliability (Study 3) was measured with a subset of parents who completed the same inventory 4 months after the original sampling (n = 26). RESULTS CDI-Down expressive and receptive vocabulary scores showed a significant positive relationship with their comparison measures, thereby demonstrating convergent validity. A significant positive relationship was also found between test-retest measures for productive and receptive vocabularies, thus supporting the reliability of the adaptation. CONCLUSION The results demonstrate that the CDI-Down is a valid and reliable tool that could be useful for parents, teachers, clinicians, and researchers.

The Composition of Early Vocabulary in Spanish Children With Down Syndrome and Their Peers With Typical Development

Purpose There are very few studies, and at present none in Spanish, on vocabulary composition in children with Down syndrome (DS). Nor has the topic been widely assessed in Spanish-speaking children with typical development (TD). This study analyzed the composition of early vocabularies in a large sample of Spanish-speaking children with DS and compared it with that of children with TD. Method We studied 108 children with DS and 108 children with TD with mental ages between 8 and 29 months, matched for size of productive vocabulary and gender. The MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (Fenson et al., 1993, 2007), adapted to the language development profile of children with DS, were used. The categories examined were nouns, predicates, closed-class words, and social words. Results The performance of children with DS was similar to that of children with TD with the same vocabulary size. The only significant difference was the larger production of nouns by children with DS. The trends of development in the different classes of words were also similar. Conclusions The strategies used by children with DS to learn vocabulary may be similar to those used by children with TD in the first stages of language learning.

La adquisición del significado de los adjetivos dimensionales: el caso de la dimensión de anchura

Resumen En un trabajo anterior (Galeote, 1995), en el que se examinaba la adquisición de diversos adjetivos dimensionales (grande-pequeño, alto-bajo, etcétera), no se encontraron indicios de que los adjetivos correspondientes a la dimensión de anchura (ancho y estrecho) comenzaran a ser dominados ni siquiera por el grupo de mayor edad (6;0 años). Ello era explicado por la enorme complejidad semántica de los mismos. El objetivo del presente trabajo consiste en examinar la adquisición de dichos adjetivos en un rango de edades más amplio (7 a 12 años). Los resultados obtenidos muestran de nuevo la enorme complejidad del significado de estos adjetivos, tal que sólo los grupos de mayor edad dan muestra de comenzar su proceso de adquisición. Se discuten estos resultados en relación con la estructura del significado léxico, uno de los temas más controvertidos en el estudio del significado y su adquisición.

The acquisition of different classes of words in Spanish children with Down syndrome

PURPOSE The primary aim of this study was to analyze the acquisition of different classes of words in Spanish-speaking children with Down syndrome (DS), with special emphasis on nouns and verbs. A second objective was to compare the results obtained with those reported by Checa et al. (2016), who used a different measure to study vocabulary composition. METHOD We studied 108 children with DS and 108 children with typical development (TD), with mental ages between 9 and 29 months (DS M = 21;26 months;days, TD M = 20;23) and chronological ages between 8;24 and 68;19 months;days (mean = 41;11 and 20;19 for DS and TD, respectively). Children were matched individually for size of productive vocabulary and gender. Data were gathered using the MacArthur-Bates CDIs, adapted to the profile of children with DS (the CDI-Down). Relative proportions were used as the measure of vocabulary. RESULTS The results differed from those obtained by Checa et al. (2016) when using absolute proportions to examine vocabulary composition. The most significant difference was the trend among children with DS to produce fewer verbs and closed-class words (articles, prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions, and auxiliaries). There were no differences in the production of nouns and social words. CONCLUSIONS The tendency of children with DS to produce fewer verbs and closed-class words could be due to difficulties with morphology and syntax. This underlines the importance of morphosyntactic skills for learning these classes of words. The methodological and clinical implications of the results are discussed.