Perspectives on Early Language from Typical Development and Down Syndrome

Abstract

Publisher Summary The developing infants and children achieve major perceptual and productive developments in the first few years of life. This chapter provides an overview of perceptual and productive abilities of the developing infants and children for language in the first few years of life. It presents what is known about language development in this age period for Down syndrome to highlight potentially important descriptive gaps. Thereafter, it discusses infant vocalizations, early semantic development, syntactic development, and relationships with language comprehension. Infants can perceive speech sounds in a categorical-like manner, combine visual and auditory input in speech perception, and extract the underlying rhythmic and musical interval structures from tone sequences. In the visually reinforced infant speech discrimination paradigm, Down syndrome infants younger than one year seem unable to establish the necessary connection between a change in the auditory stimulus and the presentation of a visual reinforce. Description of the early language difficulties of Down syndrome children may result in the development of effective strategies for augmenting the language development of these children that may not be possible later in life.