Phonological Development and Speech Disorders with Down Syndrome

Children with Down syndrome (DS) commonly have special difficulty acquiring grammar and expressive vocabulary, and studies have articulated that at least from early school ages, their speech production skills also are weaker than can be expected by their intelligence scores. During the babbling stages, however, children with DS have predominantly been found to produce canonical syllables nearly within a timeframe prescribed. The purpose of this book is to define whether early phonological development in children with DS can best be characterized as delayed but predictable based on intellectual age, as is the case for early comprehension of vocabulary and invalid syntax, or whether, like vocabulary and grammatical production, speech production is more severely impaired than could be predicted by the children¿s cognitive capabilities alone. Also, explore the extent to which early vocabulary delays are associated with deficits in speech sound production.