Parent and child predictors of mental state language development in Down syndrome

 描述（由申请人提供）：唐氏综合征（DS）是智力残疾的主要遗传原因。患有DS的人在表达语言的各个方面都有困难，包括叙事，这是一种口语形式，使说话者能够将个人经历或虚构的故事与听众联系起来。发展良好的叙事包括丰富的网络 心理状态语言是一种亲社会的方式，用来交流一个人的思想、感情和愿望，也是一个讨论他人观点和表达同情的论坛，所有这些对积极的社会互动都至关重要。DS患者表现出相对于实足年龄和发展水平期望的精神状态语言使用有限，这影响了他们的叙述质量和与同龄人互动的能力。使用中的问题 精神状态语言可能导致DS患者经历的困难 青少年时期的同伴关系和友谊，以及成年后获得有意义的工作。在旨在促进叙事能力和社会沟通的更广泛干预中，加强精神状态语言的使用可能有助于DS患者在整个生命周期中提高生活质量。制定这种干预措施需要 更好地了解这一人群的心理状态语言使用是如何发展的，并确定影响其发展的因素。因此，我们建议（1）调查DS儿童心理状态语言相对于各个发展领域的发展轨迹（即，年龄、非语言认知和表达性语言）， （2）评估DS儿童心理状态语言使用的父母和儿童预测因素。这些数据将提供深入了解DS的心理状态语言发展的限制，并作为确定支持或抑制这种行为的潜在机制的第一步。基于典型的发展模式，母亲使用的心理状态语言和儿童情绪知识（识别和标记情绪表达及其原因/后果）将被检查为并发预测儿童心理状态语言在DS。在无字绘本的叙述过程中测量母婴的心理状态语言，这是一种常见的亲子互动情境。儿童情绪知识将通过直接评估儿童从面部和上下文线索识别另一个孩子的动态情绪表达的能力来测量。在确定每个预测因子的独立贡献后，我们将检验它们对儿童心理状态的相对贡献 语言本研究产生的数据将为未来的纵向和实验研究奠定基础，以牢固地建立DS儿童心理状态语言使用发展的因果关系。最终，这项研究将导致有针对性的干预措施，以提高心理状态语言的使用，从而促进叙事和社会交际 在这个人口中的能力。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Down syndrome (DS) is the leading genetic cause of intellectual disability. Individuals with DS struggle with all facets of expressive language, including narrative, a form of spoken language that enables a speaker to relate personal experiences or fictional stories to a listener. Well-developed narratives include a rich network of mental state language that serves as a pro-social way to communicate one's thoughts, feelings, and desires and as a forum for discussing others' perspectives and expressing empathy, all crucial to positive social interaction. Individuals with DS exhibit limited use of mental state language relative to chronological age and developmental level expectations, which affects the quality of their narratives and ability to interact with peers. Problems in using mental state language may contribute to the difficulties that individuals with DS experience with peer relationships and friendships in adolescence and with gaining meaningful employment in adulthood. Enhancing mental state language use, within a broader intervention designed to promote narrative competence and social communication, is likely to contribute to improved quality of life across the lifespan for individuals with DS. Developing such interventions requires a better understanding of how mental state language use develops in this population and the identification of the factors that shape its development. Accordingly, we propose to (1) investigate the developmental trajectory of mental state language in children with DS relative to various domains of development (i.e., age, nonverbal cognition, and expressive language), and (2) evaluate parent and child predictors of mental state language use in children with DS. These data will provide insight into the constraints on mental state language development in DS and serve as a first step toward identifying the underlying mechanisms that support or inhibit this behavior. Based on models from typical development, maternal use of mental state language and child emotion knowledge (recognizing and labeling emotion expressions and their causes/consequences) will be examined as concurrent predictors of child mental state language in DS. Maternal and child mental state language will be measured during narrations of wordless picture books, a common parent-child interaction context. Child emotion knowledge will be measured through direct assessment of children's abilities to recognize another child's dynamic emotion expressions from facial and contextual cues. After determining the independent contributions of each predictor, we will examine their relative contributions to child mental state language. The data generated by this study will set the stage for future longitudinal and experimental research to firmly establish causal pathways for the development of mental state language use in children with DS. Ultimately, this research will lead to targeted interventions to enhance mental state language use and thereby promote narrative and social-communicative competence in this population.