Psycholinguistic abilities of children with Williams syndrome

The objective of this study was to investigate the psycholinguistic abilities of children with
Williams syndrome (WS) and typically developing children using the Illinois Test of
Psycholinguistic Abilities (ITPA). Performance on the ITPA was analysed in a group with WS
(N = 20, mean age = 8.5 years, SD = 1.62) and two typically developing groups, matched in
mental (MA, N = 20, mean age = 4.92 years, SD = 1.14) and chronological age (CA, N = 19,
mean age = 8.35 years, SD = 3.07). Overall, within-group analyses showed that individuals
with WS displayed higher scalar scores on the visual reception and visual association
subtests. When groups were compared, we observed inferior performance of the WS group
on all ITPA subtests when compared with typically developing groups. Moreover, an
interaction between reception and group was found, only the WS group demonstrated
superior performance on the visual reception subtest when compared to the auditory
reception subtest. Evidence from this study offers relevant contributions to the
development of educational intervention programs for children with WS.
Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior/CAPES (Processo:
1551/08-6) e Prope-UNESP-Santander and grant PIC/IC/83290/2007 from the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT).