Communication Disorders

Downs Syndrome

Condition bought on by an extra copy of a segment of the long arm of Chromosone 21
1 in 700 babies
Degree of hearing loss
Home or institutional background
Cognitive delays
- Mental capacity of 5 year old > 15 year old
- Walking at 14-66 months
- Short attention span
- Slow reaction time
1/3 of moderate severe learning disabled population
Sensory deficits
- High incidence of hearing loss
- Impaired visual functions
Mechanical problems of speech
- Muscular hypotonia
- Undersized mouth cavity
- Ptotruding tongue + defective teeth
- Flattened nose
- Excessive salivation + enlarged tonsils
- Repiratory infections

1 of 7

2 of 7

Production: lexicon and semantics
- Onset of 30 months to 4.6 years
- Early words are typical types
- Same organisation, associations
- Rate of development is slower
- General nominals represent over half of their vocabulary
  - Function words are rare
Communication
- 81% unable to communicate fully with others
- 10% of institutionalised children remain mute
- Find it easier to talk if their main words are signed as well as spoken
Alternative communication
- Makaton
  - Form of sign language
  - Mr Tumble uses Makaton to help children learn how to communicate and develop langauge skills in a fun and exciting way

3 of 7

Morphology and Syntax
- Early development okay
- 2 word speech
- Speech remains telegraphic
- No grammatical words
- Present with congenital agrammatism which is much more severe than in children with other cognitive imparments
Pragmatics
- As cognitive age
- Informative
- Turn taking
- Given new
- Prolonged eye contact
- Less spontaneous
Literacy
- Some people with DS learn reading skills when given educational opportunities
- There are no reported differences in input that would account for the patterns of deficits and strengths observed in the language of people with DS

4 of 7

A genetically based neuro-developmental disorder
Condition caused by a problem to part of chromosone 7
1 in 7500 live births
Characterised by specific physical, behavioural and cognitive differences but with am unusual advance performance in language functioning
Hoffman and Landau 1998
- Could carry out a conversation with someone with WS and not realise anything is wrong, their typical reactions using language are good
Physical features
- Wide mouth, flat nose, slack bottom lip, bulgy cheeks, irregular teeth, puffy eyes
- Low birth weight, slow weight gain, slow feeders, dehydrated
- Slight heart defect
- Low muscle tone
- Joint stiffness
- Slow developers

5 of 7

Behavioural and cognitive characteristics
- All have mild-severe learning difficulties
- Poor spacial awareness
- Endearing personality
  - Over friendly, uninhibited, excessively social
- Hyperactive
- Emotional immaturity
- Anxious but may recognise danger
- May be obsessive
- Hypersensitive to noise
Language
- Phonology: relatively good
- Semantics: word store is good but different, tend to store rare words and can lack organisation into semantic fields
- Narrative structure: typically developing children establish search theme
- Pragmatics: very social beings, considerable amount of interest in others, delayed in development of ability to understand another persons perspective, difficulty establishing and maintaining relationships

6 of 7

Grammar
- Bishop and Mogford 1993
  - Expressive language is very complex in terms of syntactic structure
- Clahsen and Almazan 1998
  - Despite their low IQ, WS children are not impaired in their performance of syntactic tasks and regular inflection
Future
- Ongoing medical monitoring and supervision
- Most will have a healthy full life
- Master self help skills
- Complete school
- Live with supervision, some may live alone
Help
- Medical practitioner
- Developmental psychologist
- Speech and language therapist
- Occcupational therapist

7 of 7