Language Skills in Preschool Children with Down Syndrome and Non-verbal Mental Age-matched Controls

Down syndrome (DS) as a chromosomal abnormality has different symptoms including cognitive problems and language delay. Studies showed a heterogeneous profile of language skills in this group of children. This study aimed to provide further information about the most vulnerable area of language -grammatical skills- regarding the unanalyzable utterances, clauses, phrases, grammatical morphemes, and mean length of utterances (MLU) in children with DS and compare them with those of non-verbal age-matched controls.

The grammatical structures of 12 children with DS (non-verbal age=39 months) were compared to those of 50 non-verbal mental age-matched controls (non-verbal age=41 months). Clause, phrase, and grammatical morphemes were investigated through spontaneous language sample analysis according to Persian-language assessment remediation and screening procedure (P-LARSP).

Children with DS had higher percentages of unanalysable text units compared with typically matched peers (P≤0.001). The MLU, number of phrases and clauses structures, and inflectional morphemes were significantly lower in children with DS compared with typical children (P<0.001).

Children with DS showed a noticeable gap in grammatical structures compared with typical children. The possibility of specific language problems in children with DS should be considered by future studies.