Background This study examined the association between executive functioning and language in young adults with Down syndrome (DS). Method Nineteen young adults with DS (aged 19–24 years) completed standardised measures of overall cognition, vocabulary, verbal fluency and executive function skills. Results Friedman's analysis of variance (χ2(3) = 28.15, P < .001) and post hoc comparisons indicated that, on average, participants had a significantly lower overall non‐verbal than verbal cognitive age equivalent and lower expressive than receptive vocabulary skills. Using Spearman correlations, performance on a verbal measure of cognition inhibition was significantly negatively related to receptive vocabulary (ρ = −.529, adjusted P = .036) and verbal fluency (ρ = −.608, adjusted P = .022). Attention was significantly positively correlated with receptive (ρ = .698, adjusted‐p = .005) and expressive (ρ = .542, adjusted P = .027) vocabulary. Verbal working memory was significantly positively associated with receptive vocabulary (ρ = .585, adjusted P = .022) and verbal fluency (ρ = .737, adjusted P = .003). Finally, visuospatial working memory was significantly associated with receptive vocabulary (ρ = .562, adjusted P = .027). Conclusions Verbal and non‐verbal measures of executive functioning skills had important associations with language ability in young adults with DS. Future translational research is needed to investigate causal pathways underlying these relationships. Research should explore if interventions aimed at increasing executive functioning skills (e.g. attention, inhibition and working memory) have the potential to lead to increases in language for young adults with DS.

Objectives Previous research has found that, relative to their peers with normal hearing (NH), children with cochlear implants (CIs) produce the sibilant fricatives /s/ and /ʃ/ less accurately and with less subphonemic acoustic contrast. The current study sought to further investigate these differences across groups in two ways. First, subphonemic acoustic properties were investigated in terms of dynamic acoustic features that indexed more than just the contrast between /s/ and /ʃ/. Second, we investigated whether such differences in subphonemic acoustic contrast between sibilant fricatives affected the intelligibility of sibilant-initial single word productions by children with CIs and their peers with NH. Design In Experiment 1, productions of /s/ and /ʃ/ in word-initial prevocalic contexts were elicited from 22 children with bilateral CIs (aged 4 to 7 years) who had at least 2 years of CI experience and from 22 chronological age-matched peers with NH. Acoustic features were measured from 17 points across the fricatives: peak frequency was measured to index the place of articulation contrast; spectral variance and amplitude drop were measured to index the degree of sibilance. These acoustic trajectories were fitted with growth-curve models to analyze time-varying spectral change. In Experiment 2, phonemically accurate word productions that were elicited in Experiment 1 were embedded within four-talker babble and played to 80 adult listeners with NH. Listeners were asked to repeat the words, and their accuracy rate was used as a measure of the intelligibility of the word productions. Regression analyses were run to test which acoustic properties measured in Experiment 1 predicted the intelligibility scores from Experiment 2. Results The peak frequency trajectories indicated that the children with CIs produced less acoustic contrast between /s/ and /ʃ/. Group differences were observed in terms of the dynamic aspects (i.e., the trajectory shapes) of the acoustic properties. In the productions by children with CIs, the peak frequency and the amplitude drop trajectories were shallower, and the spectral variance trajectories were more asymmetric, exhibiting greater increases in variance (i.e., reduced sibilance) near the fricative-vowel boundary. The listeners' responses to the word productions indicated that, when produced by children with CIs, /ʃ/-initial words were significantly more intelligible than /s/-initial words. However, when produced by children with NH, /s/-initial words and /ʃ/-initial words were equally intelligible. Intelligibility was partially predicted from the acoustic properties (Cox & Snell pseudo-R2 > 0.190), and the significant predictors were predominantly dynamic, rather than static, ones. Conclusions Productions from children with CIs differed from those produced by age-matched NH controls, in terms of their subphonemic acoustic properties. The intelligibility of sibilant-initial single-word productions by children with CIs is sensitive to the place of articulation of the initial co...

This study examines the relationship between the early identification of hearing loss and language outcomes for deaf/hard of hearing (D/HH) children, with bilateral or unilateral hearing loss and with or without additional disabilities. It was hypothesized that hearing loss identified by 3 months of age would be associated with better language outcomes. Using a prospective, longitudinal design, 86 families completed developmental instruments at two time points: at an average age of 14.8 months and an average age of 32.1 months. Multiple regression examined how hearing loss identified by 3 months of age contributed to later language outcomes while controlling for developmental level at the first time point. Hearing loss identified by 3 months of age was positively associated with better language outcomes for D/HH children at 32 months of age; however, D/HH children still exhibited language delays, compared to normative scores for same-aged hearing peers for reported measures. Language outcomes of children with unilateral hearing loss were not better than those of children with mild-to-moderate bilateral hearing loss. Children with additional disabilities and more severe bilateral hearing loss had lower language scores than those without.