Publications
Publication details [#644]
Naylor, Lauren and Jo Van Herwegen. 2012. The production of figurative language in typically developing children and Williams Syndrome. Reseach in Developmental Disabilities 33 (2) : 711–716. 6 pp.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Keywords
Place, Publisher
Amsterdam: Elsevier
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.