Relazione fra gesti e sviluppo del vocabolario nei bambini con sindrome di Down

In the literature, contrasting data have been reported both on the existence of a preference for the use of gestural rather than vocal productions (Iverson, Longobardi and Caselli, 2003) and on the predictive role of gestures on lexical development (Yoder and Warren, 2004) in children with Down syndrome [DS]. The primary aims of the present study are to analyze the relationships between gestural production and developmental and linguistic age in children with DS and to verify the validity of gesture production as a predictive index on their subsequent vocabulary development with a longitudinal design. Seventeen 36-month-old Italian children with DS participated in the study. Each child’s spontaneous gestural production was evaluated during a mother-child play session; their psychomotor development was assessed using the Brunet-Lézine Scale of Infant Development and their vocabulary size was assessed using the Italian version of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory. Parents were requested to complete the inventory at both six months and one year after the first assessment. Data analyses on the concurrent relationships between gesture production, Brunet-Lézine scores and vocabulary sizes showed that the use of gestures in children with DS was related both to psychomotor development and to word comprehension, but not to word production; these results appear to be similar to those previously identified in typically developing children. Moreover, as regards longitudinal relationships, gestural production at 36 months was significantly correlated to the subsequent lexical production, assessed at 42 and 48 months, though this relationship appeared to be mediated by word comprehension; therefore the production of gestures (in particular of deictic gestures) can be considered as a precursor of vocabulary development in children with DS too, as already demonstrated in children with typical development.