Early Development with Williams or Down Syndrome

描述（由申请人提供）：拟议研究的总体目标是描述和理解词汇发展的过程及其与交际发展、语法发展以及非语言认知发展的一般和具体方面的关系。这项研究将集中在三个群体的语言和认知发展上：患有威廉姆斯综合症的儿童、患有唐氏综合症的儿童和正常发育的儿童。我们在当前拨款期间的研究表明，患有威廉姆斯综合症的儿童的语言技能比他们的非语言认知技能更先进；患有唐氏综合症的儿童则表现出相反的模式。正常发育的儿童往往具有同等水平的语言和认知技能。由于语言和非语言认知之间关系的一般性质存在这些差异，将所有三组纳入同一研究提供了一个独特的机会，可以识别词汇、交际或语法发展的普遍和必要因素，而不是那些特定于特定速度或语言习得途径的因素。拟议的研究包括一项从婴儿期后期开始的5年纵向研究，以及涉及学龄前和学龄儿童的纵向和横断面研究。将采用观察和实验两种方法。有四个具体目标。首先是描述早期词汇增长曲线的本质。二是进一步考察词汇操作原则（启发式）和基础社会认知能力在新词习得和外延中的作用。第三是开始描述患有威廉姆斯综合症的幼儿和幼儿的交流能力的发展。四是确定威廉姆斯综合征儿童语言和认知能力的纵向发展轨迹。该研究将对语言与认知关系的理论模型以及对发育障碍儿童的认知和语言干预策略的设计产生影响。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The overall objective of the proposed research is to delineate, and make sense of, the process of lexical development and its relations to communicative development, grammatical development, and both general and specific aspects of nonlinguistic cognitive development. The research will focus on the language and cognitive development of three groups: children with Williams syndrome, children with Down syndrome, and typically developing children. Out research during the current grant period indicates that the language skills of children with Williams syndrome are more advanced than their nonverbal cognitive skills; children with Down syndrome show the opposite pattern. Children who are typically developing tend to have equivalent levels of language and cognitive skills. Because of these differences in the general nature of the relations between language and nonlinguistic cognition, inclusion of all three groups in the same studies provides a unique opportunity to identify factors that are universal and necessary to lexical, communicative, or grammatical development versus those that are specific to particular rates or paths to language acquisitions. The proposed research consists of a 5-year longitudinal study beginning in late infancy and both longitudinal and cross-sectional studies involving preschool-and school-age children. Both observational and experimental methods will be used. There are four specific aims. The first is to delineate the nature of early lexical growth curves. The second is to further examine the role of lexical operating principles (heuristics) and foundational social cognitive abilities in the acquisition and extension of new words. The third is to begin to delineate the development of communicative abilities by toddlers and young children who have Williams syndrome. The fourth is to determine longitudinally the developmental trajectories of language and cognitive abilities for children with Williams syndrome. The research will have implications both for theoretical models of the relations between language and cognition and for the design of cognitive and language intervention strategies for children with developmental disabilities.