Sound, Meaning, and Storytelling Difficulties in Adults with Down Syndrome.
- Sarah Curtis
Correspondence: sarah.curtis2019@my.ntu.ac.uk
Children with Down’s Syndrome (DS) are known to have difficulties in producing language, however, research does not focus on how this persists into the speech of adults with DS (Diez-Itza, 2021). This research examines the sound, meaning and discourse abilities of 25 adults with Down’s Syndrome in picture naming and storytelling tasks, and compares this to a control group of typically developed adults. Preliminary findings show that most adults with DS experience difficulties with producing sounds, specifically reducing consonant clusters (e.g. spoon to soon) and gliding liquids (e.g. ring to wing). In the picture naming task, most participants had meaning errors in their speech, for example responding with a similar word, such as king instead of queen, or an associated word, such as crown instead of queen. In the storytelling tasks, narratives from adults with DS were shorter, less complex and missing more main concepts compared to the control group. This suggests that sound, meaning and discourse difficulties persist into the language of most adults with DS. These language features may be particularly important to monitor in adults with DS who experience a higher risk of Alzheimer’s disease and may show early language related symptoms of cognitive decline.
