title: Maternal wait time after questions for children with and without Down syndrome.
abstract: Maternal wait time after open- and closed-ended questions provided during conversation to eight children with Down syndrome (DS) and eight language-age (LA) matched peers was investigated. Analysis of wait time after questions that children did not answer indicated that a longer wait time was provided for LA children (M = 2.5 seconds) than for DS children (M = 1.8 seconds). These wait times were matched well with the children's response times when they did answer questions; LA children taking a mean of 1.9 seconds and DS children a mean of 1.0 seconds to respond. Unlike DS children, LA children took significantly longer to respond when their answers were not topic-related to the maternal question. For both groups, there was no difference in wait times after closed- and open-ended questions and no difference for questions for which joint attention was and was not established.
authors.affiliation: Department of Communication Disorders, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis 55455, USA.
authors.forename: J K
authors.initials: JK
authors.lastname: Vettel
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Windsor
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004314:Down Syndrome / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D008297:Male; D008425:Maternal Behavior; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D011930:Reaction Time; D013068:Speech Production Measurement; D014705:Verbal Behavior