Mattiauda, Elisa;
Özsoy, Onur;
Gagarina, Natalia;
Perovic, Alexandra;
(2024)
Inferential abilities in Down syndrome: Examining verbal and nonverbal contributors to narrative comprehension in adolescents and adults.
In:
Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society.
(pp. pp. 3804-3811).
UC Merced: Merced, CA, USA.
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Abstract
Language profiles of individuals with Down syndrome (DS)reveal a pattern of heterogeneous abilities, with receptive vo-cabulary exhibiting strengths over receptive grammar, and ex-pressive language lagging behind. Little is known about infer-ential abilities in this population, in either children or adults,despite inferencing playing a pivotal role in language compre-hension. Inferential abilities are particularly relevant to thesuccessful understanding of narratives, as story plots combineexplicit (factual) and implicit (inferential) information. Thisstudy investigated inferential abilities in 26 English-speakingadolescents and adults with DS (age: 13-43, M=22.9 years)compared to 23 young vocabulary-matched typical controls(age: 4-11, M=6.96 years). Inferencing was assessed througha narrative comprehension task, which targeted understandingof story characters’ goals and internal states (ISs). Participantswith DS showed poorer comprehension of inferential ques-tions, across both goals and ISs, with vocabulary level andreceptive grammar positively contributing to the comprehen-sion of inferences. Working memory showed a positive albeitnon-significant relationship with inferencing ability, while ex-ecutive functioning skills had no effect. Our results suggestthat difficulties understanding, and potentially expressing, in-ferential information relating to story characters’ goals and ISspersevere into adulthood in individuals with DS. Such difficul-ties are moderated by general verbal abilities and seem drivenby poor grammatical skills. We discuss the contributions ofverbal and nonverbal abilities to inference-making in Downsyndrome, and potential implications for future research.
| Type: | Proceedings paper |
|---|---|
| Title: | Inferential abilities in Down syndrome: Examining verbal and nonverbal contributors to narrative comprehension in adolescents and adults |
| Event: | Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (COGSCI 2024) |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Publisher version: | https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6fr5k0c2 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY). |
| Keywords: | Down syndrome, narrative comprehension, infer-ential abilities |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > Linguistics |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10194222 |
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