Motor skills, an important foundation for language and communication, are considerably delayed in children with Down syndrome (DS) and fragile X syndrome (FXS). However, the impact of these impairments on expressive and receptive communication and the phenotypic specificity of these associations remains unknown. Participants included 37 with DS…

Purpose: In typical development, distributional cues--patterns in input--are related to language acquisition processes. Statistical and implicit learning refer to the utilization of such cues. In children with intellectual disability, much less is known about the extent to which distributional cues are harnessed in mechanisms of language learning.…

Background: Parenting children and young adults with intellectual disabilities, including individuals with fragile X syndrome and Down syndrome, is challenging, joyful, and complicated. Exploring how parents talk about their children, and the quality of the parent/child relationship can provide insight into the home environment and interactional…

Increased attention is arising on the delivery of remote cognitive interventions, which allow performing exercises in everyday settings, favouring rehabilitation continuity. The present study offers an overview of remote cognitive training programs for children with congenital brain malformation or genetic syndrome affecting the central nervous…

This protocol presents the plan for a systematic review that investigates the effect of oral language interventions for children with intellectual disability (ID), language disorder (LD), autism spectrum disorder (ASD), Down syndrome (DS), Williams syndrome (WS), and fragile X syndrome (FXS). Language development is a highly frequent area of…

The present study explored the behavioral profile of individuals with fragile X syndrome during adolescence and adulthood. Individuals with both fragile X syndrome and autism (n = 30) were compared with (a) individuals diagnosed with fragile X syndrome (but not autism; n = 106) and (b) individuals diagnosed with autism (but not fragile X syndrome;…

Individuals with fragile X syndrome (FXS) and their parents have a range of experiences navigating the crucial transition period between adolescence and adulthood. Semi structured interviews of 47 mothers of adolescents with FXS (mean child age = 15.89 years) were analyzed to identify mothers' changing expectations during the adolescent period and…

The present study contrasted physiological arousal in infants and toddlers with fragile X syndrome to typically developing control participants and examined physiological predictors early in development to autism severity later in development in fragile X syndrome. Thirty-one males with fragile X syndrome (ages 8-40 months) and 25 age-matched…

An infant's vocal capacity develops significantly during the first year of life. Research suggests early measures of pre-speech development, such as canonical babbling and volubility, can differentiate typical versus disordered development. This study offers a new contribution by comparing early vocal development in 10 infants with Fragile X…

In this study, we examined trajectories of specific domains of behavior problems (i.e., attention problems, depression/anxiety, and aggressive behavior) from age 6 to 18 in a sample of 55 children with fragile X syndrome. We also examined autism status and early parenting as predictors of subsequent behavioral trajectories. We found that attention…

The authors examined receptive and expressive language profiles for a group of verbal male children and adolescents who had fragile X syndrome along with varying degrees of autism symptoms. A categorical approach for assigning autism diagnostic classification, based on the combined use of the Autism Diagnostic Interview--Revised and the Autism…

Behavioral inflexibility (BI) has been highlighted to occur across genetic and neurodevelopmental disorders. This study characterized BI in two common neurogenetic conditions: Fragile X syndrome (FXS) and Down syndrome (DS). Caregivers of children with FXS (N = 56; with ASD = 28; FXS only = 28) and DS (N = 146) completed the Behavioral…

This study analyzed narratives of male and female adolescents with fragile X syndrome (FXS). The impact of structural language, cognition and autism symptomatology on narrative skills and the association between narratives and literacy were examined. Narratives from 32 adolescents with FXS (24 males, 8 females) were analyzed for macrostructure.…

Clinical Question: Would a child with fragile X syndrome benefit more from phonemic awareness and phonics instruction or whole-word training to increase reading skills? Method: Systematic review. Study Sources: PsycINFO. Search Terms: fragile X OR Down syndrome OR cognitive impairment OR cognitive deficit OR cognitive disability OR intellectual…

Verbal perseveration is a frequently reported language characteristic of males with Fragile X syndrome and may be a defining feature or hallmark of the syndrome. We compared the verbal perseveration of boys with Fragile X syndrome with (n = 29) and without (n = 30) autism spectrum disorder, boys with Down syndrome (n = 27), and typically…