Communication Breakdowns and Repair Strategies of Children with Down Syndrome

Abstract

The study compared communication breakdowns and repairs during mother-child interactions of children with Down syndrome (DS) and typically developing (TD) children. Thirty-four children with DS and 36 TD children participated with their mothers. Mother-child conversational samples were evaluated for rate of breakdown, rate of resolution of breakdowns, and types of linguistic strategies used by both children and mothers during breakdowns. After controlling for maternal education levels, children’s nonverbal developmental levels, and children’s expressive vocabulary levels, children with DS experienced significantly more communication breakdowns, compared to TD children. The two groups did not differ in their rates of resolving breakdowns. Mothers in each group did not differ in the types of requests for clarification they used, but children in each group showed some differences in the types of repairs they produced, with children with DS using more repetitions and fewer revisions with additional information. Children with DS and their mothers showed some differences in their communication breakdown rate and repair strategies, compared to TD children-mother dyads. However, these differences appear to support effective resolution of communication breakdowns.