Maternal Input and Child Language Comprehension During Book Reading in Children With Down Syndrome

Abstract

Purpose Communication interactions between parents and children during shared book reading impact a child's development of both language and literacy skills. This study examined maternal language input and child expressive communication during a shared book reading activity in children with Down syndrome (DS) and children with typical development (TD). Additionally, children's receptive language was examined to understand the relationship between maternal language input and child receptive language ability. Method Participants included 22 children with DS and 22 children with TD between 22 and 63 months of age and their mothers. Each mother–child dyad participated in a 7-min naturalistic shared book reading activity. Results Compared to mothers of children with TD, mothers of children with DS used significantly more utterances with less grammatical complexity, but a similar range of vocabulary diversity. Mothers of children with DS used more questions, descriptions, gestures, and labels, whereas mothers of children with TD used nearly half of their utterances to read directly from books. Children with DS communicated at a similar frequency compared to their peers with TD; however, they produced significantly fewer spoken words. Conclusions This study reveals important differences between early shared book reading interactions and provides implications for future research targeting parent-coached intervention strategies that may enhance children's learning during shared book reading by providing access to expressive language and print instruction.