Syntactic Complexity During Conversation of Boys With Fragile X Syndrome and Down Syndrome

Abstract

Boys with FXS and DS have distinctive language profiles. Although both groups demonstrated syntactic delays, boys with DS showed greater delays.

Habilidades comunicativas e lexicais de crianças com Síndrome de Down: reflexões para inclusão escolar

“…The delay in the development of communicative skills in individuals with DS is foreseen in the literature 7,10,13,19,20,24,25 , even though these individuals do not behave in a homogenous way 10,24 .…”

“…Other studies have reported that to compensate the oral production alterations, lots of children with DS used gestural communication in order to support the words during the application of vocabulary tests [18][19][20]21 .…”

“…The good performance in the communicative skills is elementary for the interaction with interlocutors and it is a means that will favor the child integration in every setting, mainly at school 8,[20][21][22][23][24][25] .…”

“…Regarding language development, studies 8,13,[17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24] described that these children show difficulties. Authors have shown the lexical acquisition, although delayed, follows the same development route 24 .…”

“…Other studies 6,10,13,[23][24][25] also pointed out the need to verify receptive and expressive skills that can be more limited in DS individuals. To compensate their oral production delay, many children use sign language for longer periods, aiming to improve their interlocutor comprehension 13,[19][20][21]23,26 . This behavior must be understood by parents and teachers so that they can optimize the communicative development, favoring this child´s mainstreaming process in the school setting.…”