Sònia Darbra

Background: The evidence on the effect of age on the receptive and expressive language skills of individuals with Down syndrome is inconclusive. Recent research highlights the relevance of having tools to detect age‐related changes in language skills.Method: Data were collected on 45 adults with Down syndrome. All were assessed with the Peabody test, token test, verbal fluency tasks and an expressive language sample.Results: Scores on token and Peabody showed a decline in older adults, whereas no significant effect of age was observed for expressive language measures. A quadratic regression confirmed the association between age and receptive language measures. Highly significant associations were also found between the performance on receptive and expressive language measures.Conclusions: Receptive language skills are more age‐sensitive than the expressive language skills. In addition to expressive language skills, receptive language skills should be measured because they show age associated changes not observed in expressive language.

The transition to secondary education is a sensitive period for social and academic development and also for student identity. However, there is scarce evidence of the development of reading comprehension and theory of mind in pupils with cochlear implant (CI) during the educational trajectory. The results show that pupils with CI obtain age-appropriate reading scores during the educational transition. Theory of mind development seems to be heterogeneous in CI users and be affected after the educational transition compared to their own performance in the first wave. This variability could be related to adaptation to secondary education and their individual characteristics.

Previous research has shown a possible link between reading comprehension and theory of mind (ToM), but these findings are unclear in adolescents with cochlear implants (CI). In the present study, reading comprehension and ToM were assessed in adolescents with CI and the relation between both skills was also studied. Two sessions were performed on two groups of adolescents aged between 12 and 16 years of age (36 adolescents with CI and 54 participants with typical hearing, TH). They were evaluated by means of a standardized reading battery, a false belief task, and Faux Pas stories. The results indicated that reading and cognitive ToM were more developed in the TH group than in adolescents with CI. However, early-CI and binaural group performance were close to the TH group in narrative and expository comprehension and cognitive ToM. The results also indicated that cognitive ToM and reading comprehension appear to be related in deaf adolescents.