title: Text comprehension in Down syndrome: the role of lower and higher level abilities.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: University of Padova, Padova, Italy. chiara.levorato@unipd.it
authors.forename: Maria Chiara
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Levorato
authors.forename: Maja
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Roch
authors.forename: Rossella
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Beltrame
mesh_terms: 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