Maternal Input and Child Language Comprehension During Book Reading in Children With Down Syndrome

Abstract

Purpose Communication interactions between parents and children during shared book reading impact a child's development of both language and literacy skills. This study examined maternal language input and child expressive communication during a shared book reading activity in children with Down syndrome (DS) and children with typical development (TD). Additionally, children's receptive language was examined to understand the relationship between maternal language input and child receptive language ability. Method Participants included 22 children with DS and 22 children with TD between 22 and 63 months of age and their mothers. Each mother–child dyad participated in a 7-min naturalistic shared book reading activity. Results Compared to mothers of children with TD, mothers of children with DS used significantly more utterances with less grammatical complexity, but a similar range of vocabulary diversity. Mothers of children with DS used more questions, descriptions, gestures, and labels, whereas mothers of children with TD used nearly half of their utterances to read directly from books. Children with DS communicated at a similar frequency compared to their peers with TD; however, they produced significantly fewer spoken words. Conclusions This study reveals important differences between early shared book reading interactions and provides implications for future research targeting parent-coached intervention strategies that may enhance children's learning during shared book reading by providing access to expressive language and print instruction.

Embedding key word sign prompts in a shared book reading activity: The impact on communication between children with Down syndrome and their parents

“…Previous findings show that in order for shared book reading to support growth in child language, it is not sufficient to merely read the text of the book (Landry et al., 2012). Rather, parents need to make reading engaging by ‘scaffolding the language of the book for optimal engagement and reciprocal communication’ (Barton‐Hulsey et al., 2020 p. 1476). For typically developing children who are verbal, there are a number of established techniques that have been reported to achieve this, such as those outlined in the process of dialogic reading (e.g., using questions to encourage the child to talk about the pictures, providing informative feedback using expansions and corrective modelling [Mol et al., 2008]).…”

“…Parents report a lack of motivation and attention during shared book reading and highlight these factors as significant barriers when reading with their child with Down syndrome (Lusby & Heinz, 2020). This passivity can result in parents taking on a more directive role and is corroborated by findings that compared to mothers of typically developing children, mothers of children with Down syndrome use more utterances and ask more questions to try and engage their child in greater communication (Barton‐Husley et al., 2020).…”

“…Three measures were used to explore the quality and quantity of parental language used during each book reading. In keeping with prior research (e.g., Barton‐Hulsey et al., 2020) quantity was evaluated as the total number of parental utterances and quality as MLU in morphemes and vocabulary diversity (VOCD). The number of parental utterances included those scripted in the book and any spontaneous extra‐textual utterances produced by the parents.…”

“…In contrast, findings suggest that targeting parent–child interactions in shared book reading is an effective intervention approach to promote phonological awareness and letter knowledge (van Bysterveldt et al., 2006) and, when integrated with other approaches, to remediate speech error patterns (van Bysterveldt et al., 2010b). Lastly, there are a group of studies examining the quality and quantity of parental language used with children with Down syndrome during shared book reading activities, where explicit instruction on the techniques involved is not given (e.g., Barton‐Hulsey et al., 2020; Hilvert et al, 2022). Barton‐Hulsey and colleagues compared mothers of children with typical development with mothers of those with Down syndrome and found the latter group used more utterances but with reduced grammatical complexity.…”

Reading Skills in Down Syndrome: Implications for Clinical Practice

“…With parents as partners, rich home literacy environments can be used to support the development of phonological awareness, vocabulary, syntax, and print conventions in young children with DS. 45 For example, Barton-Hulsey et al 46 reported that mothers of children with DS (22-63 months) provided the same amount of vocabulary input as mothers of children with typical development during shared book reading, used more words for descriptive purposes, and simplified their syntax to meet their child's developmental needs. Similarly, in a 6-week shared book reading intervention, Van Bysterveldt et al 47 taught parents of 4-year-old children with DS to provide explicit instruction in letter knowledge, letter-sound knowledge, and initial phoneme identification (e.g., /s/ is the first sound in "spot").…”