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Expressive language style among adolescents and adults with Williams syndrome

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2008

NICOLE A. CRAWFORD ,
LISA R. EDELSON ,
DANIELA PLESA SKWERER  and
HELEN TAGER-FLUSBERG
NICOLE A. CRAWFORD
Affiliation:
University of Louisville
LISA R. EDELSON
Affiliation:
Boston University School of Medicine
DANIELA PLESA SKWERER*
Affiliation:
Boston University School of Medicine
HELEN TAGER-FLUSBERG
Affiliation:
Boston University School of Medicine
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Daniela Plesa Skwerer, Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, Boston University School of Medicine, 72 East Concord Street, Boston, MA 02118-1301. E-mail: dplesas@bu.edu
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Abstract

Language samples elicited through a picture description task were recorded from 38 adolescents and adults with Williams syndrome (WS) and one control group matched on age, and another matched on age, IQ, and vocabulary knowledge. The samples were coded for use of various types of inferences, dramatic devices, and verbal fillers; acoustic analyses of prosodic features were carried out, and an independent group of judges provided global ratings of the overall expressiveness of the language. In addition, a standardized measure of social adaptive functioning was administered to the parents of the participants with WS. The findings revealed distinctive developmental trends in the use of expressive content and prosodic patterns by adolescents and adults with WS that were not evident among the controls. Ratings of expressiveness by naive judges of the speech samples produced by the participants with WS were related to parent evaluations of adaptive social communication skills; however, the verbal productions of this group were not judged to be significantly more expressive than those of controls.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 29 , Issue 4 , October 2008 , pp. 585 - 602
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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