Indicators of theory of mind in narrative production: a comparison between individuals with genetic syndromes and typically developing children

The Effects of Syntactic, Semantic, and Pragmatic Prominence on Pronoun Interpretation in Adults With Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

PURPOSE

Pronouns are referentially ambiguous: For example, "she" could refer to any female. Nonetheless, errors in pronoun interpretation rarely occur for adults with typical development (TD) due to several strategies implicitly shared between the talker and listener. The purpose of this study was to test the impacts of syntactic, semantic, and prosodic prominence on pronoun interpretation for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) and TD.

METHOD

Adults with IDD (n = 28) and TD (n = 27) listened to ministories involving a pronoun with two potential antecedents that varied in syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic prominence. Subject/first-mentioned antecedents are more syntactically prominent than object antecedents. Semantic prominence was manipulated via verb transitivity: Subjects are more semantically prominent when the verb is highly transitive (e.g., "hit" vs. "see," a low-transitivity verb for which the subject is merely experiencing the action). Pragmatic prominence was manipulated by placing prosodic focus on one of the two potential antecedents. Eye gaze to images representing the potential antecedents was tracked as a measure of online processing. Responses to a follow-up pronoun interpretation question were also recorded.

RESULTS

Adults with TD used syntactic, semantic, and-in early processing-pragmatic prominence when interpreting ambiguous pronouns. Adults with IDD were sensitive to syntactic prominence but to a significantly lesser extent than their peers with TD.

CONCLUSIONS

Pronouns are an integral part of everyday conversation, and when the conversational partners do not share common strategies to link ambiguous pronouns with their antecedents, misunderstandings will occur. Results show that adults with IDD only weakly share pronoun interpretation strategies with adults with TD, suggesting that pronouns may be an important focus for intervention for this population.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.23875809.

The development of early social cognitive skills in neurogenetic syndromes associated with autism: Cornelia de Lange, fragile X and Rubinstein-Taybi syndromes

BACKGROUND

Cornelia de Lange (CdLS), Fragile X (FXS) and Rubinstein-Taybi syndromes (RTS) evidence unique profiles of autistic characteristics. To delineate these profiles further, the development of early social cognitive abilities in children with CdLS, FXS and RTS was compared to that observed in typically developing (TD) and autistic (AUT) children.

METHODS

Children with CdLS (N = 22), FXS (N = 19) and RTS (N = 18), completed the Early Social Cognition Scale (ESCogS). Extant data from AUT (N = 19) and TD (N = 86) children were used for comparison.

RESULTS

Similar to AUT children, children with CdLS, FXS and RTS showed an overall delay in passing ESCogS tasks. Children with CdLS showed a similar degree of delay to AUT children and greater delay than children with FXS and RTS. The CdLS, FXS and RTS groups did not pass tasks in the same sequence observed in TD and AUT children. Children with CdLS (p = 0.04), FXS (p = 0.02) and RTS (p = 0.04) performed better on tasks requiring understanding simple intentions in others significantly more than tasks requiring joint attention skills.

CONCLUSIONS

An underlying mechanism other than general cognitive delay may be disrupting early social cognitive development in children with CdLS, FXS and RTS. Factors that may disrupt early social cognitive development within these syndromes are discussed.

Narrative and prosodic skills in children and adolescents with Down syndrome and typically developing children

PURPOSE

Children with Down Syndrome (DS) show difficulties in language development, in both basic and complex abilities, as narratives. Less is known about the prosodic competence in DS, but the few available studies highlighted the presence of some deficits. Considering the importance of narratives and prosody in communication, the main aim of this study is to investigate these two competencies in participants with DS.

METHOD

13 children with DS participated (Mean age: 13;04, years; months). Their narrative and prosodic abilities, collected through a storytelling task, were compared with those of two control groups of typically developing (TD) children, one matched for nonverbal mental age (MA, Mean age: 5;03) and the other matched for the mean length of utterance (MLU, Mean age: 5;05). For the narrative competence, we considered both the macrostructural (i.e. quantity of information and story structure) and the microstructural level (i.e. verbal productivity, lexical diversity, syntactic complexity). For the prosodic competence, we took into account acoustic measures linked to intonation (i.e. mean fundamental frequency (f0), pitch range, final speech profile, and speed of speech).

RESULT

The results of the Mann-Whitney test showed that participants with DS produced stories comparable to those of TD children in nearly all the variables considered, except for the syntactic complexity when compared with children of the same MA. Differences between participants with DS and TD children were found in the f0 and the final pitch profile used.

CONCLUSION

Considering the small size of the samples, these preliminary results should be taken with caution. Nonetheless, this study confirms the presence of difficulties in the prosody of speech and in the syntactic competence of children with DS. These difficulties could have consequences on the possibility to communicate efficiently and should be taken into account in rehabilitation programmes.

An Observational Study of Social Interaction Skills and Behaviors in Cornelia de Lange, Fragile X and Rubinstein-Taybi Syndromes

We directly assessed the broader aspects of sociability (social enjoyment, social motivation, social interaction skills and social discomfort) in individuals with Cornelia de Lange (CdLS), fragile X (FXS) and Rubinstein-Taybi syndromes (RTS), and their association with autism characteristics and chronological age in these groups. Individuals with FXS (p < 0.01) and RTS (p < 0.01) showed poorer quality of eye contact compared to individuals with CdLS. Individuals with FXS showed less person and more object attention than individuals with CdLS (p < 0.01). Associations between sociability and autism characteristics and chronological age differed between groups, which may indicate divergence in the development and aetiology of different components of sociability across these groups. Findings indicate that individuals with CdLS, FXS and RTS show unique profiles of sociability.

Narrative Abilities of Adults' With Down Syndrome as a Window to Their Morphosyntactic, Socio-Cognitive, and Prosodic Abilities

Down syndrome (DS) is the most common developmental disorder characterized by mild to moderate intellectual disability. Several studies have reported poor language and prosodic skills and contradictory results regarding individuals’ with DS socio-cognitive skills, whereas most of them have focused on children with DS. The present study attempts to explore adults’ with DS language, socio-cognitive and prosodic abilities via the use of story-retellings. Twenty adults with DS and two groups of TD children, one matched to their expressive vocabulary (TD-EVT) and the other matched to their non-verbal mental age (TD-RCPM), took part in the present study. Participants listened to a story while viewing a wordless picture PowerPoint presentation on a computer screen, and then, they were instructed to retell the story while viewing the pictures for a second time. Each participant listened to two stories, one with “lively” and one with “flat” prosody. Results revealed that adults’ with DS performance was comparable with the one presented by the TD-RCPM group, whereas the TD-EVT group performed significantly better in almost all variables. Individuals’ with DS re-narrations, however, contained significantly less complement clauses and internal state terms (related or not related to Theory of Mind–ToM) compared to the re-narrations of both control groups. In contrast, the group with DS performed similarly to both control groups in comprehension questions related to main characters’ internal state terms and significantly better compared to the TD-RCPM group in questions related to ToM. In terms of prosody, all three groups performed significantly better on story structure and comprehension questions when prosody was “lively” compared “flat” prosody. DS group’s re-narrations did not contain enough internal state terms, not due to their inability in recognizing them, but due to their poor morphosyntactic abilities, which did not allow them to find the proper means to express the main characters’ internal states. Prosody facilitated participants with DS in the comprehension and re-narration. This suggests that intervention programs based on prosody could support the language skills of adults with DS.

Vocabulary as a Central Link between Phonological Working Memory and Narrative Competence: Evidence from Monolingual and Bilingual Four-Year-Olds from Different Socioeconomic Backgrounds

Phonological working memory capacity, vocabulary size, and narrative competence are important skills in children's L1 and L2 acquisition, which may vary as a function of their language background and socioeconomic status (SES). We investigated test data of 56 typically developing 4-year-old kindergarten children from two SES and two language backgrounds: 29 children (15 higher SES, 14 lower SES) were monolingual German-speaking, and 27 children (14 higher SES, 13 lower SES) were successive Turkish-German bilinguals. The tests comprised a non-word repetition task testing phonological working memory, receptive vocabulary tests (in L1 and L2), and a narrative task. We investigated the effects of SES and language background on children's test performance. Results indicate that SES was a highly significant factor for phonological working memory and vocabulary in the monolingual children, but not in the bilingual children. Although the items of the non-word repetition task followed German phonotactic structure, lower SES (LSES) L2 children did not differ significantly from their monolingual LSES peers, demonstrating that there was no bilingual working memory disadvantage in the LSES group. A significant effect of language background was found for German vocabulary and for all categories of narrative competence, but only two slight SES effects on narrative competence. Significant correlations were found between phonological working memory and vocabulary as well as between vocabulary and narrative competence, but not between phonological working memory and narrative competence. Results suggest that phonological working memory and narrative competence are different domains of language awareness, and that vocabulary may act as the central variable mediating between them.

Diagnosis and management of Cornelia de Lange syndrome: first international consensus statement

Cornelia de Lange syndrome (CdLS) is an archetypical genetic syndrome that is characterized by intellectual disability, well-defined facial features, upper limb anomalies and atypical growth, among numerous other signs and symptoms. It is caused by variants in any one of seven genes, all of which have a structural or regulatory function in the cohesin complex. Although recent advances in next-generation sequencing have improved molecular diagnostics, marked heterogeneity exists in clinical and molecular diagnostic approaches and care practices worldwide. Here, we outline a series of recommendations that document the consensus of a group of international experts on clinical diagnostic criteria, both for classic CdLS and non-classic CdLS phenotypes, molecular investigations, long-term management and care planning.

Impaired theory of mind and symptoms of Autism Spectrum Disorder in children with Prader-Willi syndrome

In order to evaluate the social cognitive functioning in children with Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS), Theory of Mind (ToM) and symptoms of Autism Spectrum Disorder were evaluated. Sixty-six children with PWS aged 7-17 years were tested using the Theory of Mind test-R and the Diagnostic Interview for Social Communication disorders. We tested the correlation between Total ToM Standard Deviation Score (Total ToM SDS) and genetic subtype of paternal deletion or maternal uniparental disomy, and total IQ, verbal IQ and performal IQ. Prevalence and symptoms of Autism Spectrum Disorder were assessed. Median (interquartile range) of total ToM SDS of those aged 7-17 years was -3.84 (-5.73, -1.57). Their Total ToM SDS correlated with total IQ (β=0.662, p<0.001, adj.R(2)=0.407), in particular with verbal IQ (β=0.502, p=0.001, adj.R(2)=0.409), but not with performal IQ (β=0.241, p>0.05, adj.R(2)=0.259). No difference in Total ToM SDS was found between children with deletion and maternal uniparental disomy (β=-0.143, p>0.05, adj.R(2)=-0.016). Compared to the reference group of healthy children aged 7-12 years, children with PWS in the same age group had a median ToM developmental delay of 4 (3-5) years. One third of children with PWS scored positive for Autism Spectrum Disorder. Most prominent aberrations in Autism Spectrum Disorder were focused on maladaptive behavior. Our findings demonstrate a markedly reduced level of social cognitive functioning, which has consequences for the approach of children with PWS, i.e. adjustment to the child's level of social cognitive functioning.

Principles underlying the Bilingual Aphasia Test (BAT) and its uses

The Bilingual Aphasia Test (BAT) is designed to be objective (so it can be administered by a lay native speaker of the language) and equivalent across languages (to allow for a comparison between the languages of a given patient as well as across patients from different institutions). It has been used not only with aphasia but also with any condition that results in language impairment (Alzheimer's, autism, cerebellar lesions, developmental language disorders, mild cognitive impairment, motor neuron disease, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's, vascular dementia, etc.). It has also been used for research purposes on non-brain-damaged unilingual and bilingual populations. By means of its 32 tasks, it assesses comprehension and production of implicit linguistic competence and metalinguistic knowledge (which provide indications for apposite rehabilitation strategies). Versions of the BAT are available for free download at www.mcgill.ca/linguistics/research/bat/.