DSRF 2025

Background: Caregiver language facilitates development in children with developmental disabilities (Anderson et al., 2021). Research has examined caregiver-child interactions with preschool-age children with Down syndrome and found them more directive than caregivers of age-matched children with neurotypical development. A notable gap exists concerning caregiver input to school-age children with Down syndrome. Evidence indicates that children with Down syndrome continue to develop language throughout school-age, and caregivers report regularly reading with their school-age children with Down syndrome. However, until this study, no research had examined the nature of these interactions.

Research Question: What are the key features of maternal talk to their school-age children with Down syndrome during a wordless storybook interaction?

Methods: Mothers of 40 school-age children with Down syndrome (6-11 years) completed a wordless storybook task that was recorded and transcribed using Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts software (Miller & Iglesias, 2012). Maternal talk was coded for communicative function: Prompting Communication (e.g., asking questions; encouraging child talk), Verbal Responding (e.g., answering questions; responding to child talk), and Directing Behavior (e.g., maintaining the interaction). The coding scheme was modified from prior literature (Hilvert et al., 2021; Sterling & Warren, 2014; 2018) to fit a wordless storybook.

Results: The rate of maternal talk (i.e., frequency of type of talk per minute) was highest for Prompting Communication (M = 3.17), then Verbal Responding (M = 0.92), and Directing Behavior (M = 0.32). Maternal talk that was off-task (M = 0.11) or storytelling (M = 4.13) was coded but excluded from analyses.

Conclusion: As the first study examining caregiver talk with school-age children with Down syndrome, caregivers actively provided opportunities for their children to engage in the storybook. Notably, caregivers were not as directive as compared to previous findings. Future research must replicate and extend these findings, including caregiver talk to school-age children in other communication contexts.

References:

• Anderson, N. J., Graham, S. A., Prime, H., Jenkins, J. M., & Madigan, S. (2021). Linking quality and quantity of parental linguistic input to child language skills: A meta‐analysis. Child Development, 92(2), 484-501.

• Hilvert, E., Lorang, E., & Sterling, A. (2021). Maternal use of decontextualized and contextualized talk: An in-depth investigation of early parent–child interactions in Down syndrome. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 30(4), 1767-1780.

• Miller, J., & Iglesias, A. (2012). Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT) (Research Version 2012).

• Sterling, A., & Warren, S. F. (2014). Maternal Responsivity in Mothers of Young Children with Down Syndrome. Developmental Neurorehabilitation, 17(5), 306–317. https://doi.org/10.1038/jid.2014.371

• Sterling, A., & Warren, S. F. (2018). Parenting of children with Down syndrome compared to fragile X syndrome. Developmental Neurorehabilitation, 21(1), 64–67. https://doi.org/10.1080/17518423.2016.1259274