TALKING ABOUT SELF AND OTHER - EMERGENCE OF AN INTERNAL STATE LEXICONIN YOUNG-CHILDREN WITH DOWN-SYNDROME

The ability to talk about the internal states (IS) of self and other i s an age-typical development of early childhood that is thought to ref lect young children's emergent self-other understanding. This study ex amined the emergence of an IS lexicon in a cross-sectional sample of y oung children with Down syndrome (DS) and a cognitively and demographi cally comparable group of normally developing (ND) children. Children' s IS lexicons were derived from transcripts of their spontaneous utter ances during two laboratory contexts: a mother-child emotions picture book task and semistructured play. Children with DS produced significa ntly fewer IS words and fewer IS word types than their MA-matched coun terparts. Controlling for corpus size, children with DS also were less likely to attribute internal states to themselves and were more conte xt bound in their use of IS language. In addition, children with DS al so differed from ND children in the semantic content of their IS langu age, with proportionately higher rates of affective words and lower ra tes for words about volition, ability, and cognition. For both the DS and ND groups, individual differences in IS language production were s ignificantly related to general expressive language skills. However, d issociations were observed for the relation between children's IS word production and nonverbal symbolic play skills in the two groups. Thes e findings suggest some degree of disorganization at the interface amo ng symbolic domains for children with DS. Because IS language is criti cal to the regulation of social interaction and an early index of self -other differentiation and understanding, children with DS may be at r isk for later compromises in self-organization.