Referential Communication Skills of Children with down Syndrome

Abstract

Referential communication skills were investigated in a group of Down Syndrome (n = 10) and a group of normal (n = 8) subjects matched according to mental age. Referential description tasks and dyadic referential communication tasks were administered to determine measures of communicative competence in referential communication situations. Performance on selected referential description tasks was similar across the two groups. The results showed that although subjects with Down Syndrome have sufficient communication skills to allow successful communicative interchange in dyadic referential communicative situations, they have particular difficulty in encoding information when critical information is located on the verb of the referent.