GESTURES AND WORDS IN EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDREN WITH DOWN-SYNDROME

This study investigated the development of language and communication in children with Down syndrome (DS). More specifically, the aim was to examine the relations among verbal comprehension, verbal production, and gesture production in the very early stages of development. Forty children (age range: 10-49 months) with DS and 40 children with normal development (age range: 8-17 months) participated in this study. Chil dren with DS came from two Italian health centers. The communicative a nd linguistic development of children with DS was measured by administ ering the Italian version of the MacArthur Communicative Development I nventory. The children with DS were severely delayed when compared wit h normally developing children in reaching the developmental stages. I n such children a dissociation emerged between verbal comprehension an d production, in Favor of comprehension, whereas a synchronous develop ment was found between vocal lexical comprehension and gestural produc tion. The individual differences previously reported in these children are also evident in all domains examined. There were no significant d ifferences between children with DS and typically developing controls matched for lexical comprehension on verbal production. However the tw o groups differed significantly in gestural development, suggesting a ''gesture advantage'' in children with DS compared With controls match ed For word comprehension. Some possible reasons For this dissociative profile are discussed.