Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T13:24:25.110Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

An investigation into maternal use of telegraphic input to children with Down syndrome

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 October 2019

Emily LORANG*
Affiliation:
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Wisconsin – Madison, USA
Courtney E. VENKER
Affiliation:
Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders, Michigan State University, USA
Audra STERLING
Affiliation:
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Wisconsin – Madison, USA
*
*Corresponding author: Goodnight Hall, 1975 Willow Drive, Madison, WI53706, USA. E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

Maternal input influences language development in children with Down syndrome (DS) and typical development (TD). Telegraphic input, or simplified input violating English grammatical rules, is controversial in speech–language pathology, yet no research to date has investigated whether mothers of children with DS use telegraphic input. This study investigated the quality of linguistic input to children with DS compared to age-matched children with TD, and the relationship between maternal input and child language abilities. Mothers of children with DS simplified their input in multiple ways, by using a lower lexical diversity, shorter utterances, and more telegraphic input compared to mothers of children with TD. Telegraphic input was not significantly correlated with other aspects of maternal input or child language abilities. Since children with DS demonstrate specific deficits in grammatical compared to lexical abilities, future work should investigate the long-term influence of maternal telegraphic input on language development in children with DS.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abbeduto, L., Murphy, M. M., Cawthon, S. W., Richmond, E. K., Weissman, M. D., Karadottir, S., & Brien, A. O. (2003). Receptive language skills of adolescents and young adults with Down or fragile X syndrome. American Journal on Mental Retardation, 108, 149–60.2.0.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Beurkens, N. M., Hobson, J. A., & Hobson, R. P. (2013). Autism severity and qualities of parent–child relations. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 43, 168–78.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bornstein, M. H., Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., Tal, J., Ludemann, P., Toda, S., Rahn, C. W., … Vardi, D. (1992). Maternal responsiveness to infants in three societies: the United States, France, and Japan. Child Development, 63, 808–21.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brady, N., Warren, S. F., Fleming, K., Keller, J., & Sterling, A. (2014). Effect of sustained maternal responsivity on later vocabulary development in children with fragile X syndrome. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 57, 212–26.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bredin-Oja, S. L., & Fey, M. E. (2014). Children's responses to telegraphic and grammatically complete prompts to imitate. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 23, 1526.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, J. H., Johnson, M. H., Paterson, S. J., Gilmore, R., Longhi, E., & Karmiloff-Smith, A. (2003). Spatial representation and attention in toddlers with Williams syndrome and Down syndrome. Neuropsychologia, 41, 1037–46.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brown, R. (1973). A first language, the early stages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bruder, M. B., & Dunst, C. J. (1999). Expanding learning opportunities for infants and toddlers in natural environments: a chance to reconceptualize early intervention. Zero to Three Bulletin, 20, 34–6.Google Scholar
Carvajal, F., & Iglesias, J. (2000). Looking behavior and smiling in Down syndrome infants. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 24, 225–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caselli, M. C., Monaco, L., Trasciani, M., & Vicari, S. (2008). Language in Italian children with Down syndrome and with specific language impairment. Neuropsychology, 22, 2735.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Caselli, M. C., Vicari, S., Longobardi, E., Lami, L., Pizzoli, C., & Stella, G. (1998). Gestures and words in early development of children with Down syndrome. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 41, 1125–35.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chapman, R. S. (1995). Language development in children and adolescents with Down syndrome. In Fletcher, P. & MacWinney, B. (Eds.), Tha handbook of child language (pp. 641–63). Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Chapman, R. S., Hesketh, L. J., & Kistler, D. J. (2002). Predicting longitudinal change in language production and comprehension in individuals with Down syndrome: hierarchical linear modeling. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 45, 902–15.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chapman, R. S., Schwartz, S. E., & Kay-Raining Bird, E. (1991). Language skills of children and adolescents with Down Syndrome: I. Comprehension. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 34, 1106–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ciciolla, L., Gerstein, E. D., & Crnic, K. A. (2014). Reciprocity among maternal distress, child behavior, and parenting: transactional processes and early childhood risk. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 43, 751–64.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cleave, P. L., Kay-Raining Bird, E., Trudeau, N., & Sutton, A. (2014). Syntactic bootstrapping in children with Down syndrome: the impact of bilingualism. Journal of Communication Disorders, 49, 4254.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cuckle, H., & Maymon, R. (2016). Development of prenatal screening: a historical overview. Seminars in Perinatology, 40, 1222.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dimitrova, N., Özçalışkan, Ş., & Adamson, L. B. (2016). Parents’ translations of child gesture facilitate word learning in children with autism, Down syndrome and typical development. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 46, 221–31.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Eadie, P. A., Fey, M. F., Douglas, J. M., & Parsons, C. L. (2002). Profiles of grammatical morphology and sentence imitation in children with specific language impairment and Down syndrome. Journal of Speech, Language, & Hearing Research, 45, 720–32.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fernald, A., & Hurtado, N. (2006). Names in frames: infants interpret words in sentence frames faster than words in isolation. Developmental Science, 9, 3341.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Finestack, L. H., Sterling, A. M., & Abbeduto, L. (2013). Discriminating Down syndrome and fragile X syndrome based on language ability. Journal of Child Language, 40, 244–65.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fisher, C., Gertner, Y., Scott, R. M., & Yuan, S. (2010). Syntactic bootstrapping. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 1, 143–9.Google ScholarPubMed
Flenthrope, J. L., & Brady, N. C. (2010). Relationships between early gestures and later language in children with fragile X syndrome. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 19, 135–42.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fraser, W. (1972). Modifications of language situations in an institution for profoundly retarded children. Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology, 14, 148–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hadley, P. A., Rispoli, M., Fitzgerald, C., & Bahnsen, A. (2011). Predictors of morphosyntactic growth in typically developing toddlers: contributions of parent input and child sex. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 54, 549–66.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hallgren, K. A. (2012). Computing inter-rater reliability for observational data: an overview and tutorial. Tutorials in Quantitative Methods for Psychology, 8, 2334.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hart, B., & Risley, T. R. (1995). Meaningful differences in the everyday experiences of young American children. Toronto: Paul H. Brookes.Google Scholar
Holm, S. (1979). A simple sequentially rejective multiple test procedure. Scandinavian Journal of Statistics, 6, 6570.Google Scholar
Hooper, S. R., Burchinal, M., Roberts, J. E., Zeisel, S. A., & Neebe, E. C. (1998). Social and family risk factors for infant development at one year: an application of the cumulative risk model. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 19, 8596.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iverson, J. M., Longobardi, E., & Caselli, M. C. (2003). Relationship between gestures and words in children with Down's syndrome and typically developing children in the early stages of communicative development. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 38, 179–97.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Johnson-Glenberg, M. C., & Chapman, R. S. (2004). Predictors of parent–child language during novel task play: a comparison between typically developing children and individuals with Down syndrome. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 48, 225–38.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kay-Raining Bird, E., & Cleave, P. (2015). Mothers’ talk to children with Down Syndrome, language impairment, or typical development about familiar and unfamiliar nouns and verbs. Journal of Child Language, 43, 131.Google ScholarPubMed
Kay-Raining Bird, E., Gaskell, A., Babineau, M. D., & MacDonald, S. (2000). Novel word acquisition in children with Down syndrome: Does modality make a difference? Journal of Communication Disorders, 33, 241–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kedar, Y., Casasola, M., & Lust, B. (2006). Getting there faster: 18- and 24-month-old infants’ use of function words to determine reference. Child Development, 77, 325–8.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kedar, Y., Casasola, M., Lust, B., & Parmet, Y. (2017). Little words, big impact: determiners begin to bootstrap reference by 12 months. Language Learning and Development, 13, 317–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kover, S. T., & Atwood, A. K. (2013). Establishing equivalence: methodological progress in group-matching design and analysis. American Journal on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, 118, 315.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Landry, S. H., Smith, K. E., Swank, P. R., Assel, M. A., & Vellet, S. (2001). Does early responsive parenting have a special importance for children's development or is consistency across early childhood necessary? Developmental Psychology, 37, 387403.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lorang, E., Sterling, A., & Schroeder, B. (2018). Maternal responsiveness to gestures in children with Down syndrome. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 27, 1018–29.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lowe, J., Erickson, S., MacLean, P., Schrader, R., & Fuller, J. (2013). Association of maternal scaffolding to maternal education and cognition in toddlers born preterm and full term. Acta Paediatrica, 102, 72–7.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Luyster, R. J., Kadlec, M. B., Carter, A., & Tager-Flusberg, H. (2008). Language assessment and development in toddlers with autism spectrum disorders. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 38, 1426–38.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Martin, G. E., Klusek, J., Estigarribia, B., & Roberts, J. E. (2009). Language characteristics of individuals with Down syndrome. Topics in Language Disorders, 29, 112–32.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mason-Apps, E., Stojanovik, V., Houston-Price, C., & Buckley, S. (2018). Longitudinal predictors of early language in infants with Down syndrome: a preliminary study. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 81, 3751.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mastrogiuseppe, M., Capirci, O., Cuva, S., & Venuti, P. (2015). Gestural communication in children with autism spectrum disorders during mother–child interaction. Autism, 19, 469–81.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McDuffie, A., Yoder, P., & Stone, W. (2005). Prelinguistic predictors of vocabulary in young children with autism spectrum disorders. Journal of Speech, Language, & Hearing Research, 48, 1080–97.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McGregor, K. K., Rost, G., Arenas, R., Farris-Trimble, A., & Stiles, D. (2013). Children with ASD can use gaze in support of word recognition and learning. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 54, 745–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mervis, C. B., Kistler, D. J., John, A. E., & Morris, C. A. (2012). Longitudinal assessment of intellectual abilities of children with Williams syndrome: multilevel modeling of performance on the Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test-second edition. American Journal on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, 117, 134–55.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Miller, J. F., Iglesias, A. (2012). Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts [Research version]. Middleton, WI: SALT Software.Google Scholar
Mullen, E. (1995). Mullen Scales of Early Learning. Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance Services.Google Scholar
Parker, S. E., Mai, C. T., Canfield, M. A., Rickard, R., Wang, Y., Meyer, R. E., … Correa, A. (2010). Updated national birth prevalence estimates for selected birth defects in the United States, 2004–2006. Birth Defects Research Part A - Clinical and Molecular Teratology, 88, 1008–16.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Price, J., Roberts, J., Hennon, E., Berni, M., Anderson, K., & Sideris, J. (2008). Syntatic complexity during conversation of boys with fragile X syndrome and Down syndrome. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 51, 315.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pueschel, S. M. (1995). Down syndrome. In Parker, S. & Zuckerman, B. (Eds.), Behavioral and developmental pediatrics: a handbook for primary care (pp. 116–19). New York: Little Brown.Google Scholar
Roach, M. A., Barratt, M. S., Miller, J. F., & Leavitt, L. A. (1998). The structure of mother–child play: young children with Down syndrome and typically developing children. Developmental Psychology, 34, 7787.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Roberts, J. E., Price, J., & Malkin, C. (2007). Language and communication development in Down syndrome. Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Research Reviews, 13, 2635.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rowe, M. L. (2012). A longitudinal investigation of the role of quantity and quality of child-directed speech in vocabulary development. Child Development, 83, 1762–74.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sameroff, A. J., & Chandler, M. J. (1975). Reproductive risk and the continuum of caretaking casualty. In Horowitz, F. D., Hetherington, M., Scarr-Salaptaek, S., & Siegel, G. (Eds.), Review of child development research (pp. 187244). University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Slonims, V., & Mcconachie, H. (2006). Analysis of mother–infant interaction in infants with Down syndrome and typically developing infants. American Journal on Mental Retardation, 273, 273–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snow, C. E. (1989). Understanding social interaction and language acquisition: sentences are not enough. In Bornstein, M. H. & Bruner, J. S. (Eds.), Interaction in human development (pp. 83103). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Sokolov, J. L. (1993). A local contingency analysis of the fine-tuning hypothesis. Developmental Psychology, 29, 1008–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sterling, A., & Abbeduto, L. (2012). Language development in school-age females with fragile X syndrome. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 56, 974–83.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sterling, A., Barnum, L., Skinner, D. G., Warren, S. F., & Fleming, K. (2012). Parenting young children with and without fragile X syndrome. American Journal on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, 117, 194206.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sterling, A., & Warren, S. F. (2014). Maternal responsivity in mothers of young children with Down syndrome. Developmental Neurorehabilitation, 17, 306–17.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Thiemann-Bourque, K., Warren, S. F., Brady, N., Gilkerson, J., & Richards, J. (2014). Vocal interaction between children with Down syndrome and their parents. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 23, 474–85.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
van Kleeck, A., Fey, M., Kaiser, A., Miller, J., & Weitzman, E. (2010). Should we use telegraphic or grammatical input in the early stages of language development to children who have language impairments? A meta-anlysis of the research and expert opinion. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 19, 321.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Venker, C. E., Bolt, D., Meyer, A., Sindberg, H., Ellis Weismer, S., & Tager-Flusberg, H. (2015). Parent telegraphic speech use and spoken language in preschoolers with ASD. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 58, 1733–46.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vicari, S., Caselli, M. C., & Tonucci, F. (2000). Asynchrony of lexical and morphosyntactic development in children with Down syndrome. Neuropsychologia, 38, 634–44.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Warren, S. F., & Brady, N. C. (2007). The role of maternal responsivity in the development of children with intellectual disabilities. Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Research Reviews, 13, 330–8.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Warren, S. F., Brady, N., Sterling, A., Fleming, K., & Marquis, J. (2010). Maternal responsivity predicts language development in young children with fragile X syndrome. American Journal on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, 115, 5475.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Willer, B. (1974). Reduced versus nonreduced models in language training of MR children. Journal of Communication Disorders, 7, 343–55.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Yoder, P. J., & Warren, S. F. (2004). Early predictors of language in children with and without Down syndrome. American Journal of Mental Retardation, 109, 285300.2.0.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zampini, L., & D'Odorico, L. D. (2011). Lexical and syntactic development in Italian children with Down's syndrome. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders, 46, 386–96.Google ScholarPubMed
Zampini, L., Fasolo, M., & D'Odorico, L. (2011). Characteristics of maternal input to children with Down syndrome: a comparison with vocabulary size and chronological age-matched groups. First Language, 32, 324–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar