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. 2023 Jun 21:14:1118659.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1118659. eCollection 2023.

Morphosyntactic development in German-speaking individuals with Down syndrome-longitudinal data

Bernadette Witecy  1 , Eva Wimmer  2 , Isabel Neitzel  2 , Martina Penke  1
Affiliations

Morphosyntactic development in German-speaking individuals with Down syndrome-longitudinal data

Bernadette Witecy et al. Front Psychol. .

Abstract

Introduction: The present study provides longitudinal data on the development of receptive and expressive grammar in children and adolescents with Down syndrome and addresses the role of nonverbal cognitive abilities and verbal short-term memory for morphosyntactic development.

Method: Seventeen German-speaking individuals with Down syndrome (aged 4;6-17;1 years at first testing (T1)) were assessed twice, 4;4-6;6 years apart. For a subset of five participants, there was also a third assessment 2 years after the second. Receptive grammar, nonverbal cognition, and verbal short-term memory were tested using standardized measures. For expressive grammar, elicitation tasks were used to assess the production of subject-verb agreement and of wh-questions.

Results: At group level, the participants showed a significant increase in grammar comprehension from T1 to T2. However, progress diminished with increasing chronological age. Notable growth could not be observed beyond the age of 10 years.With respect to expressive grammatical abilities, progress was limited to those participants who had mastered verbal agreement inflection around age 10 years. Individuals who did not master verbal agreement by late childhood achieved no progress in producing wh-questions, either.There was an increase in nonverbal cognitive abilities in the majority of participants. Results for verbal short-term memory followed a similar pattern as those for grammar comprehension. Finally, neither nonverbal cognition nor verbal short-term memory were related to changes in receptive or expressive grammar.

Discussion: The results point to a slowdown in the acquisition of receptive grammar which starts before the teenage years. For expressive grammar, improvement in wh-question production only occurred in individuals with good performance in subject-verb agreement marking, which suggests that the latter might have a trigger function for further grammatical development in German-speaking individuals with Down syndrome. The study provides no indication that nonverbal cognitive abilities or verbal short-term memory performance determined the receptive or expressive development. The results lead to clinical implications for language therapy.

Keywords: Down syndrome; expressive grammar; language development; longitudinal study; receptive grammar; subject-verb agreement; verbal short-term memory; wh-questions.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Individual change in Test for Reception of Grammar (TROG-D) raw scores. (A) Participants with notable change (difference scores ≥ 3) (B) Participants with little or no change.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Individual change in wh-question production accuracy scores between T1 and T2.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Individual change in nonword repetition scores. (A) Participants with notable change (difference scores ≥ 3) (B) Participants with little or no change or decline.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Syntactic tree of the wh-question Wen kitzelt der Junge? (“Who is the boy tickling?”).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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