Down+Syndrome

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Research in this area of early conceptual development is reviewed by [C.|Mervis (1990)]. She concludes that there are three major similarities between children with Down syndrome and ordinary children at this stage. First, young children initially believe that when an adult points or indicates an object for which the child does not already have a name, the accompanying word refers to the whole object rather than some attribute of the object. Second, the first words that all the children learn are words for objects that either are capable of moving independently or can be manipulated by the child. Thirdly, the first set of concrete nouns acquired by both sets of children represent basic level categories, that is those that are the easiest to identify perceptually. Mervis draws attention to some evidence for differences in the way mothers of children with Down syndrome and mothers of ordinary children are talking to their children at this stage and suggests this may affect their rate of vocabulary acquisition and conceptual development.

Signing
In a recent cross-sectional study ( [J., Seeley, A., Miolo, G., Rosin, M., & Murray-Branch, J.|Miller et al 1991] ), they measured the spoken and signed vocabularies of 44 children with Down syndrome and 46 typically developing children, from 12 to 27 months in mental-age. The results showed that as a group, the children with Down syndrome acquired significantly fewer spoken words as their mental-age increased than the ordinary children. However, when the signed-only vocabulary was added to the spoken vocabularies of the children with Down syndrome, the group differences were no longer significant. In a further longitudinal study of 20 children with Down syndrome and 23 ordinary children, parents recorded their vocabulary (spoken and signed) over a period covering 12 months of mental-age development. Overall, the children with Down syndrome did not acquire vocabulary at the same rate as the ordinary children but within both groups there was wide variation in rates of progress ( [J., Sedey, A., Miolo, G., Murray-Branch, J. & Rosin, M.|Miller et al 1992] ).

Two words together
Once children have established a single word vocabulary of about 50 words they begin to use two-word phrases. While children with Down syndrome use the same range of two-word constructions in their speech they tend to have a larger single word vocabulary when they begin to put two words together (about 100 words rather than the 50 word vocabulary size that is usual for ordinary children). Another study by Miller and his colleagues illustrated that compared with ordinary children they continue to have a larger overall vocabulary for the length of utterance used but show more difficulty beginning to pick up and use grammatical markers and syntax rules ( [J.|Miller 1988] ).

Symbols and print
Using written language systems can have a variety of benefits. Symbols and words can prompt production and be used to greatly increase productive practice. They may help to overcome the auditory memory problems even at the stage of first word learning. Later they can be used to prompt and help the child to practise longer utterances. This may help improve the ability to spontaneously produce intelligible sentences. Print is a very powerful tool for language teaching as the child can be taught to read, understand and practice grammatically and syntactically correct utterances ( [S. & Bird, G|Buckley & Bird 1993] ).

[]Excellent table

Table 1. **The skills and knowledge needed for talking** Body language Facial expressions (pragmatics and discourse skills) ||< Building a dictionary of single words and their meanings (lexicon and semantics) ||< Learning the word ending rules for plurals, tenses and word order rules for questions, negatives, (morphology and syntax) ||< Learning to make speech sounds and to produce clear words with correct stress and intonation (articulation, phonology and prosody) || []
 * ~ Interaction ||||~ Spoken language knowledge ||~ Speaking ||
 * ~ Non-verbal skills ||~ Vocabulary ||~ Grammar ||~ Speech/motor skills ||
 * < Smiling, eye-contact, taking turns, initiating a conversation, maintaining the topic

http://www.cdss.ca/images/pdf/parent_information/teaching_students_with_down_syndrome.pdf

http://aaiddjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1352/0895-8017(2008)113%5B32%3AECICWD%5D2.0.CO%3B2 Good article about Down Syndrome and Emotional Regulation.