The development of vocabulary in Spanish children with Down syndrome: Comprehension, production, and gestures

Abstract

Background Our main purpose was to compare the lexical development of Spanish children with Down syndrome (DS) and children with typical development (TD) to investigate the relationship between cognitive and vocabulary development in comprehension and oral and gestural production.

Method Participants were 186 children with DS and 186 children with TD, with a mental age (MA) of 8–29 months and matched on gender and MA. Information about vocabulary was obtained using a new Spanish adaptation of the MacArthur–Bates CDI for children with DS.

Results No significant differences in oral production were found. Lexical comprehension and gestural production of children with DS were superior. Similar to children with TD, gestural production in children with DS decreased as oral production increased.

Conclusion Our study provides evidence to support that lexical comprehension and gesture production are strengths in children with DS. With respect to oral production, our results do not support a specific dissociation between cognitive and lexical development.

Keywords:

• Down syndrome
• productive vocabulary
• receptive vocabulary
• symbolic gestures
• cognitive development
• MacArthur–Bates CDI

Acknowledgement

We would like to express our thanks to the children and their families, and to the many therapists of Down syndrome associations and early intervention units, as well as to the staff and the people from the nurseries who participated in our research.