The relationship between event representation and linguistic skill in narratives of children and adolescents with Down syndrome

Children and adolescents with Down syndrome present with greeter difficulty in expressive language than nonverbal cognitive domains. As narratives inv olve an understanding of the relationship(s) between events and their verba l expression, this divergence has implications for understanding narrative abilities in persons with Down syndrome. In this project, we investigated t he relationship between event representation and linguistic expression in n arratives of children and adolescents with Down syndrome (n = 31) and group s of typically developing children matched For mental age (n = 31), syntax comprehension (n = 28), or expressive language (n = 27). A short wordless f ilm, the Pear Story (Chafe, 1980), was viewed individually by each particip ant and then each participant retold the story to an adult who (presumably) had not seen the film. Findings suggest a disparate relationship between l inguistic expression and event representation in narratives of children and adolescents with Down syndrome. Participants with Down syndrome produced n arratives that were significantly longer and more complex than the expressi ve-language-matched-group, with no differences observed in event structure when compared to the MA-matched group. Comparatively, use of linguistic dev ices and cohesion were poorer in the children and adolescents with Down syn drome than in the MA-matched children, with no differences observed in comp arison to children matched for expressive language.