Syntactic comprehension in Down's syndrome children

Abstract

The ability of 24 Down''s syndrome children to act out active and passive semantically biased and neutral sentences in a comprehension task was compared with that of 24 non-retarded children, matched on the basis of their verbal comprehension scores on the Reynell Developmental Language Scale (Reynell, 1969). Down''s syndrome children closely resembled control children both in terms of percentage correct responses and in terms of individual children''s patterns of error. The results are taken as support for the proposition that the processes underlying language comprehension in the retarded are fundamentally the same as those of non-retarded children. There was evidence of a slight (6-12 mo.) delay in the appearance of syntactic strategies of comprehension by the Down''s syndrome children compared with those non-retarded children matched with them in terms of verbal comprehension age.