Prosodic skills in children with Down syndrome: Relationships with lexical and syntactic development

Several studies in the literature have analyzed language development in children with Down syndrome because their language development delays have been reported to be greater than their cognitive level would suggest (Abbeduto, Warren & Conners, 2007). However, the prosodic characteristics of their language have been minimally investigated (Stojanovik, 2011). The present study aimed to analyze the prosodic skills of children with Down syndrome during a specific developmental stage: the transition between the production of single-word utterances and first sentences. The relationships among linguistic areas were investigated to identify the developmental patterns of language acquisition in this population. The participants were 9 children with Down syndrome who ranged in chronological age from 45 to 63 months and had a vocabulary of approximately 500 words. The children’s spontaneous productions were recorded during observations of play sessions, transcribed and coded in terms of syntactic complexity. Data analyses showed that both lexical and morphological skills were related to the children’s ability to produce multiword utterances. In addition, better prosodic competence was related both to the children’s chronological age and to their ability to produce complex utterances