Text comprehension in Down syndrome: the role of lower and higher level abilities.
The contribution of lower level linguistic abilities (study 1) and a higher level capacity, namely the use of context, (study 2), on text comprehension was studied. Participants were 16 individuals with Down syndrome aged between aged between 8 years 11 months and 16 years 10 months, and 16 children with typical development, aged between 5 years 11 months and 7 years 3 months, matched for the level of text comprehension. In study 1 the two groups were compared for receptive vocabulary and sentence comprehension: both of them were shown to play a role in text comprehension in Down syndrome. Since participants with Down syndrome had very low scores in sentence comprehension, study 2 tested the hypothesis that when sentences were presented within a brief context, individuals with Down syndrome would perform better. This hypothesis was confirmed and it was shown that contextual facilitation was closely related to text comprehension skills.
Levorato
Maria Chiara
MC
University of Padova, Padova, Italy. chiara.levorato@unipd.it
Roch
Maja
M
Beltrame
Rossella
R
D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003071:Cognition; D032882:Comprehension; D004314:Down Syndrome / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007807:Language Tests; D008297:Male; D011932:Reading; D012044:Regression Analysis; D014825:Vocabulary