Prosodic skills in Spanish-speaking adolescents and young adults with Down syndrome

CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS: The findings contribute to the ongoing development of the language profile of teenagers and young adults with DS and imply the need to design prosodic intervention programs based on their specific profile.WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS: What is already known on the subject Prosody is a fundamental element of language, and its mastery affects the effectiveness of communication. However, research on prosody in Down syndrome (DS) that offers a holistic view from a psycholinguistic approach is still scarce. To date, studies focused on providing a detailed profile of prosodic skills in individuals with DS have been mainly conducted with a few English-speaking children. These studies have shown that the comprehension and production of prosody is severely impaired, especially when considering affect and focus production, as well as the perception and production of prosodic forms. During childhood, greater efficacy is found in prosody comprehension than in prosody expression. What this study adds This is the first study analysing the prosodic profile of a large group of Spanish-speaking teenagers and young adults with DS. Poorer performance in the perception and production of both prosodic functions and forms was observed in participants with DS compared to participants with intellectual disability of unknown origin matched on chronological age and nonverbal cognition. Unlike what has been previously found in children, teenagers and young adults with DS performed at...
Source: International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders - Category: Speech-Language Pathology Authors: Source Type: research