The production of figurative language in typically developing children and Williams syndrome

Naylor, Lauren and Van Herwegen, Jo (2011) The production of figurative language in typically developing children and Williams syndrome. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 33(2), pp. 711-716. ISSN (print) 0891-4222

Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ridd.2011.11.013

Abstract

The current study investigated the development of figurative language production, including different types of figurative expressions, during a fictional narrative in 20 typically developing (TD) children and 20 children with Williams syndrome (WS) aged 7-18 years old. In contrast to previous studies, developmental trajectories showed that (1) the production of figurative expressions in TD children did not change with age, (2) the WS group produced a similar amount of figurative expressions in comparison to the TD group, (3) but regression analyses showed that, out of a number of verbal and non-verbal standardised background measures, synonymy knowledge was the best predictor for figurative language production scores in WS. Both the clinical and theoretical implications of these results are discussed.

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