REFERENTIAL COMUNICATION SKILL IN CHILDREN WITH DOWN SYNDROME

OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study is to investigate the Referential Communication skill in children with Down Syndrome (DS). In particular in this research, we have studied the development of pragmatic language in relation to non-verbal skills. It’s analyzed the Referential Communication skills in children with DS, both in production and comprehension of referential messages: oriented and / or ambiguous , adequate (appropriate) and inadequate (inappropriate) METHODS: The participants in this research are a total of 24 children: 12 children with DS and 12 children with typical development (TD) (control group). The mean age children with DS is 7 years and 8 months and the mean age children with TD is 7 years and 4 months. In the first phase (F1) to all 24 children has been administered a test to evaluate non-verbal skill. In a second phase (F2), has been administered a test to evaluate Referential Communication skills. RESULTS: The results suggest that there is a strong relationship between non-verbal and referential communication skills, the assessed non-verbal skill that contributed to variations in referential performance, especially for participants with DS . Furthermore, DS children have better performance in the condition " talking " rather than the condition "listener" and there is significant correlation between adequate and inadequate messages within the listener condition. CONCLUSION We have shown that skills Referential Communication are the result of several factors verbal, non-verbal, through the evaluation of the relationship between non-verbal skills and communicative same the Referential Communication skills.