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Receptive number morphosyntax in children with Down syndrome

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 May 2020

ROBERTO A. ABREU-MENDOZA Open the ORCID record for ROBERTO A. ABREU-MENDOZA [Opens in a new window] ,
TANIA JASSO ,
ELIA E. SOTO-ALBA  and
NATALIA ARIAS-TREJO
ROBERTO A. ABREU-MENDOZA
Affiliation:
Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
TANIA JASSO
Affiliation:
Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
ELIA E. SOTO-ALBA
Affiliation:
Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
NATALIA ARIAS-TREJO*
Affiliation:
Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
*
Address for correspondence Natalia Arias-Trejo, Facultad de Psicología, Av. Universidad 3004, Sótano, Edificio “C”, Col. Copilco Universidad C. P. 04510, Coyoacán, Cdad. de México, México. tel: 52 55 56222287; E-mail: nariast@unam.mx
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Abstract

This study investigated the comprehension of plural morphosyntactic markers and its relationship with numerical comparison abilities in children with Down syndrome (DS). It evaluated 16 Spanish-speaking children with DS (mean verbal mental age = 3;6) and 16 typically developing children with similar receptive vocabulary (mean chronological age = 3;5). Children participated in two preferential looking tasks assessing their abilities to map singular and plural markers to their visual referents and to distinguish one object from more than one. Results showed that both groups of children correctly mapped plural markers to their referents but failed to map singular ones. Furthermore, results also indicated that both groups also looked at collections of more than one object with four objects but not at those with two. The eye movement patterns of children who looked at collections of more than one object suggest a counting-like strategy. These results indicate that comprehension of plural markers of children with DS is similar to that of their typically developing peers; however, it is not related to their numerical abilities.

Keywords

Down syndromegrammatical numbernumerical comparison abilitiespreferential looking
Type
Article
Information
Language and Cognition , Volume 12 , Issue 4 , December 2020 , pp. 679 - 704
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Copyright
© UK Cognitive Linguistics Association, 2020

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Footnotes

Roberto A. Abreu-Mendoza is now affiliated with Rutgers University, USA. The authors have declared that no conflict of interests exist. The research described in this paper was supported by a PAPIIT (IN304417) research grant awarded to the last author. We thank all the institutions, children, and their families who contributed and participated in this study. We also thank Ana Rosa Serra and Brenda Razo for their assistance on reaching and recruiting participants, and Omar Isaúl Elorza Padilla for drawing the figures used as stimuli. R.A.M, T.J., and N.A.T. conceived and designed the study; R.A.M, T.J., and E.S.A. performed the experiments; R.A.M. carried out the statistical analyses. All contributors participated in writing the manuscript. The research data to reproduce our results can be found in the following OSF link: <https://osf.io/yh7sc/>.

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