Morphosyntactic indicators in children with Down syndrome and normal

The aim of this research was to compare morphosyntatic categories in Down syndrome and normal groups. A retrospective methodology was employed in 43 children with Down syndrome aged 10 to 20 and 40 normal children aged 8 to 12 years selected from a total population of 2,000 children and adolescents with Down syndrome and 450000 normal children. Participants had met entry criteria set for the study and were matched. From both groups speech samples were collected using a Persian Visual Story Book, Vols. 1 and 2 (Ashtiani, 1995). Based on data analysis, children with Down syndrome were significantly different from normal children in producing whole words, prepositions and MLUs, but this difference was not significant in producing verbs and nouns. The overall performance of the control group was better than the group with Down syndrome. According to these results, the pattern of deficit in individuals with Down syndrome is not developmental delay so the treatment of language disorders in children with down syndrome must be different from those with developmental language delay and treatment must be different in each language category.