A Multi-Method Investigation of Pragmatic Development in Individuals With Down Syndrome.

The sample was small, and sample sizes decreased across visits, so the growth analyses were exploratory. The groups were not perfectly matched at Visit 1: girls with Down syndrome had lower mental age and vocabulary than typically developing controls, and later visits showed faster development in the control group. The study did not test an intervention, so it cannot show that any treatment improves pragmatic language. Participants had to use three-word phrases, speak English as their first language, and pass a hearing screen, so the findings may not apply to minimally verbal children or children with hearing loss. Executive functioning was measured with a parent questionnaire using raw scores because many participants fell outside the norming sample. The parent-report CCC-2 was not included in trajectory analyses because the sample became too small after Visit 1.

No author conflicts of interest were reported in the supplied text. The article is listed as receiving NIH extramural research support.

Do not conclude that children with Down syndrome have typical conversational behavior because boys did not differ from controls on total observed violations. The study still found broad parent-reported and standardized pragmatic difficulty, and girls with Down syndrome had more observed violations than controls.