It has been claimed that in the language systems of people with Williams syndrome (WS), syntax is intact but lexical memory is impaired. Evidence has come from past tense elicitation tasks with a small number of participants where individuals with WS are said to have a speci c de cit in forming irregular past tenses. However, typically developing children also show poorer performance on irregulars than regulars in these tasks, and one of the central features of WS language development is that it is delayed. We compared the performance of 21 participants with WS on two past tense elicitation tasks with that of four typically developing control groups, at ages 6, 8, 10, and adult. When verbal mental age was controlled for, participants in the WS group displayed no selective de cit in irregular past tense performance. However, there was evidence for lower levels of generalisation to novel strings. This is consistent with the hypothesis that the WS language system is delayed because it has developed under different constraints, constraints that perhaps include atypical phonological representations. TheRequests for reprints should be addressed to Michael Thomas or Annette Karmiloff-Smith, Neurocognitive Development Unit, Institute of Child Health, 30, Guilford Street, London WC1N 1EH, UK. Email: M. Thomas@ich.ucl.ac.uk or a.karmiloff-smith@ich.ucl.ac.uk We would like to express our appreciation to the Williams Syndrome Foundation, UK, for their generous help in putting us in touch with families whom we warmly thank for their participation in this research. Thanks also to Dorothy Bishop and Marc Joanisse for helpful comments on an earlier draft on this paper. This research was supported by MRC Programme Grant No. G9715642 to Annette Karmiloff-Smith. results are discussed in relation to dual-mechanism and connectionist computational models of language development, and to the possible differential weight given to phonology versus semantics in WS development .
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