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A longitudinal study of language development in two children with Williams syndrome

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2004

YONATA LEVY
Affiliation:
The Hebrew University

Abstract

Williams syndrome (WS) is often cited as the prime example within developmental disorders of the dissociation of language from other cognitive skills, particularly from visuo-motor skills. This claim has been responsible for the challenges posed by this population to cognitive theories and to models of language acquisition. Two Hebrew-speaking children with WS were followed longitudinally for 18 months, from the first occurrences of two word combinations. Y was 3;9–5;3 and BT was 4;2–5;8 during data collection. Both children had an MLU of 1·8–2·8. The children's linguistic profiles were compared to the profiles of typically-developing (TD) children of similar MLU as well as to the profiles of 11 children with a variety of neurodevelopmental disorders (ND), matched on MLU. The profiles exhibited by the children with WS throughout the period of the study differed from the profiles seen in both control groups.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
2004 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

This work was supported by the Israeli Science Foundation, Grant 795/97. I am grateful to the Israeli Williams Syndrome Association for their help and enthusiasm.