Preverbal skills in 8-month-old children with sex chromosome trisomies

Abstract

Individuals with sex chromosome trisomies (SCTs) have an increased risk of language delays and impairments. However, there are only a few data relative to their language development in early childhood. The present study aimed to investigate the preverbal skills shown by a group of 8-month-old children with SCTs to assess the presence of a possible early communicative delay. Moreover, the predictive role of early preverbal productions on later lexical development at 24 months was analysed. Twenty-six children with SCTs and 24 typically developing (TD) children participated in the study. Their use of vocal productions and gazes addressed to the communicative partner was assessed during a parent–child observation session held when the children were 8 months old. In addition, the children’s word comprehension at 8 months and their word production at 24 months were indirectly assessed by a parental report. Children’s word comprehension was similar in the two groups of children, whereas a significantly lower frequency per minute of gazes was found in children with SCTs than in TD children. A significantly lower proportion of children with SCTs showed the ability to produce babbling during the observation session, and significant differences were also found in the frequency of babbling utterances. No significant differences emerged among the subgroups of children with different types of SCTs. The predictive role of babbling on later lexical size was found in TD children but not in children with SCTs. This result could be probably explained by the small number of children in this group who could produce babbling utterances. The study leads to identify early signals of delay in the preverbal skills of children with SCTs. Early monitoring of their communicative development could help the clinicians in intervening with well-timed and targeted programmes.

A cross-sectional study of early language abilities in children with sex chromosome trisomy (XXY, XXX, XYY) aged 1–6 years

“…Early receptive and expressive vocabulary has also been assessed by the research group of Zampini and colleagues. In a group of 8-month-old children (9 XXY, 10 XXX, 7 XYY), no significant differences in receptive vocabulary were found between children with and without SCT (Zampini et al, 2020). Expressive vocabulary was assessed in the 13 boys with XXY at 18 months and the boys and girls with an extra X at 24 months.…”

“…However, most of these findings are based on studies including school-aged children, adolescents, or adults, and both the number of the included individuals and the recruitment strategy (e.g., prospective follow-up, clinical-, or research groups) of the group varied from study to study, making it difficult to generalize results. Only a few previous studies have focused on very young children with SCT (Zampini et al, 2020(Zampini et al, , 2017(Zampini et al, , 2018. To understand the emergence and trajectory of developmental language problems, it is important to assess language abilities in infancy and toddlerhood at the early stages of rapid development and to assess multiple language domains at different developmental stages.…”

Language Development in the Second Year of Life: The Case of Children with Sex Chromosome Trisomies Diagnosed before Birth

“…Recent literature reports that a slowdown in language development could be highlighted from the first stages of acquisition in all of the SCTs [21,27]. As early as eight months of age, children with SCTs (n = 26) showed a delay in preverbal communicative skills.…”

“…The neuropsychological profile of children with SCTs is frequently characterised by language and learning impairments, attentional and executive deficits, and atypical motor development [23][24][25]. The IQs usually have a normal distribution, but with the mean score of about 10 points lower than TD children, and verbal abilities at a lower level than the performance ones [26,27]. Children with SCTs show a higher incidence of language delays and impairments [27][28][29][30], and their neuropsychological profile is similar to that of children with DLD (i.e., a significant impairment in verbal skills, with general intelligence usually in the normal range, but with the mean slightly shifted to the left).…”

“…The IQs usually have a normal distribution, but with the mean score of about 10 points lower than TD children, and verbal abilities at a lower level than the performance ones [26,27]. Children with SCTs show a higher incidence of language delays and impairments [27][28][29][30], and their neuropsychological profile is similar to that of children with DLD (i.e., a significant impairment in verbal skills, with general intelligence usually in the normal range, but with the mean slightly shifted to the left). No significant differences among the three SCT karyotypes were found in the first stages of language development [21,31], though some differences in their profiles could emerge later.…”