title: Investigating prosodic ability in Williams syndrome.
abstract: This paper investigates whether people with Williams syndrome (WS) have prosodic impairments affecting their expression and comprehension of four main uses of intonation. Two adolescent males with WS were assessed using the PEPS-C battery, which considers prosodic abilities within a psycholinguistic framework, assessing prosodic form and function in both the input and output domains. The performances of the subjects with WS were compared with control data for age and language-comprehension matched children. The results revealed significant prosodic impairment affecting all areas of the profile. Crucially, however, different profiles of strengths and weaknesses were revealed for the two subjects. The results support the growing view that WS is a heterogeneous population in terms of linguistic abilities.
authors.affiliation: Dorset Speech & Language Therapy Service, UK.
authors.forename: Catherine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Catterall
authors.forename: Sara
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Howard
authors.forename: Vesna
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Stojanovik
authors.forename: Marcin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Szczerbinski
authors.forename: Bill
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Wells
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002648:Child; D032882:Comprehension / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007806:Language Disorders / Q000209:etiology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D008297:Male; D013018:Sound Spectrography; D013062:Speech Articulation Tests; D013064:Speech Disorders / Q000209:etiology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D013065:Speech Intelligibility; D013068:Speech Production Measurement; D014705:Verbal Behavior; D018980:Williams Syndrome / Q000150:complications / Q000503:physiopathology*