Studiu

Perspectives on Early Language from
Typical Development and Down Syndrome
MICHAEL P. LYNCH’
DEPARTMENT OF PEDIATRICS
UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI
MAILMAN CENTER FOR CHILD DEVELOPMENT
MIAMI, FLORIDA 33101
REBECCA E. EILERS
DEPARTMENTS OF PSYCHOLOGY, PEDIATRICS, A N D OTOLARYNGOLOGY

UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI
MIAMI, FLORIDA 33101
I. INTRODUCTION
Although the above title is appropriate for this article, it might just as easily
have been named “Early Typical Language Development, with a Comment on
Down Syndrome.” Considerable progress has been made in the description of
early (up to about 4 years of age) language development in typically developing
infants and children, but, despite many years devoted to inquiry, only limited
descriptive progress has been made concerning Down syndrome. This situation
is dismaying because Down syndrome is obvious from birth, and populations of
Down syndrome infants and young children have been the focus of many devel-
opmentally oriented studies of language acquisition.
Innate capacities for speech perception and the effects of linguistically specific
experience on perceptual and productive abilities have been documented in typ-
ically developing infants and children, but the dearth of information in these
areas concerning Down syndrome has at least two important disadvantages. One
‘Present address: Department of Audiology and Speech Sciences, h d u e University, West

Lafayette, Indiana 47907.
INTERNATIONALREVIEW OF RESEARCH m 55 Copyright 0 1991 by Academic h s s . Inc.

MENTAL RETARDATION. Vol. 17 All righu of reproduction in any form reserved.
56 Michael P . Lynch and Rebecca E . Eilers
is that few of the language-related disabilities that are specifically related to

Down syndrome are known. In fact, it was not until the past 5 years that
compelling evidence for particular language deficits related to Down syndrome
has been available. The other disadvantage is that opportunities for a deeper
understanding of typical language development have not been fully exploited by
studying the effects of a disorder such as Down syndrome on this development
early in life.
This article provides a broad introduction to perceptual and productive abilities
of typically developing infants and children for language in the first few years of
life. It also incorporates what is known about language development in this age
period for Down syndrome to highlight potentially important descriptive gaps.
In the perceptual domain, the review will include psychoacoustic studies of
speech perception, with a brief introduction to newly obtained converging evi-
dence from music perception to broaden the general scientific perspective on
perceptual development. In the production domain, infant vocalizations, as well
as early semantic development, syntactic development, and relationships with
language comprehension, will be discussed. Additionally, cry, perhaps the first
avenue of communication for infants, will be covered briefly. Finally, the link
between perception and production will be considered in a synopsis of research
on communicative interaction between caregivers and infants and children. This
review of perception, production, and adult-child interactions is designed to
bring the reader an integrated perspective on relationships between acquisition of
language in typical and Down syndrome infants and to point out gaps in our
knowledge of effects of Down syndrome on early communicative development.
11. PERCEPTION
A. Auditory Sensitivity
Hearing is crucial to the development of speech and language (Jaffe, 1977).
The importance of hearing is evident as early as the end of the first year of life,
when profoundly deaf infants fail to establish production of mature syllables
(e.g., ba, da), but their 7 - to 10-month-old normally hearing counterparts are
producing large proportions of mature (canonical) syllables (Kent, Osberger,
Netsell, & Hustedde, 1987; Oller & Eilers, 1988; Oller, Eilers, Bull, & Carney,
1985). Additionally, when deaf infants begin babbling, the phonetic content
appears more restricted than that of normally hearing infants, and the speech
features produced by deaf infants are typically those that may be visible on the
lips of adult speakers. For example, deaf infants tend to produce more bilabial
sounds than normally hearing infants (Stark, 1972; Stoel-Gammon & Otomo,
1986).
Although hearing is certainly critical for the timely development of mature
PERSPECTIVES ON LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT 57
syllable production, alternative sensory systems may be brought to bear on

accomplishing communicative goals. Lynch, Oller, and Steffens (1989) found
that an “acochlear” child, a child born without the organ of hearing and, there-
fore, totally deaf, achieved mature syllable production by the late age of 32
months when the aid of speech information provided through the sense of touch
via tactile speech aids (see Lynch, Oller, & Eilers, 1989; Weisenberger & Miller,
1987) and specialized speech training. The tactile aids seemed to provide critical
timing information needed for the production of mature syllables. Studies of
effects of hearing impairment on early vocal production have served to demon-
strate the importance of audition in early language development. Without an
accurate acoustic representation of the speech signal, either as produced by
others or as feedback, infants and children with hearing impairment are hindered
in the very earliest stages of language development.
A child need not be deaf to show effects of hearing loss on communication
development. Down syndrome infants do not necessarily receive an accurate
acoustic representation of speech because they are at greater risk for hearing loss
than are typically developing infants (Downs, 1980; Gordon, 1987; Kaga &
Marsh, 1986; Northern & Downs, 1984). Reasons for this increased risk include
otitis media (Dahle & McCollister, 1986) and middle ear anomalies (Balkany,
Berman, & Simmons, 1978). Thus, although the extent of hearing loss can vary
considerably across individuals, many Down syndrome persons begin life with
incomplete or distorted auditory input. As a result, the nature of the speech code
is obscured, predisposing infants to delays in language development. Hearing
loss is also a problem in older Down syndrome children (Fulton & Lloyd, 1968)
and adults (Keiser, Montague, Wold, Maune, & Pattison, 1981; Widen, Folsom,
Thompson, & Wilson, 1987). What is not clear at this point, however, is the
nature of the relationship between hearing loss and specific patterns of language
delay (Miller, 1988) in Down syndrome.
€3. Innate Capacities for Speech

The importance of hearing in the development of language is evident not only
in the productive realm, but also in the perceptual realm. Spoken language is a
highly complex acoustic signal perceived in real time. Infants and children cope
with a potentially baffling array of acoustic characteristics by extracting key
invariant properties of the acoustic signal that correspond to categories of speech
sounds. These acoustic characteristics include, among others, voice onset time,
which is important for determining whether a consonant is voiced (e.g., /b/as in
back) or voiceless (e.g., /p/as in pack); formant frequency relationships, which
are concentrations of acoustic energy along the frequency continuum that cue
vowel identity, as well as other speech features; and formant transitions, which
are the interim slopes of energy concentration between speech segments that are
58 Michael P . Lynch and Rebecca E. Eilers
important cues to segment identities (see Denes & Pinson, 1963, for a more
complete description of speech acoustics).
That adults are capable of processing the acoustic complexities of speech came
as no surprise because adults are, in typical circumstances, very capable per-
ceivers of the speech signal (MacMillan, Kaplan, & Creelman, 1977). What
came as quite a surprise, however, was the demonstration by Eimas, Siqueland,
Jusczyk, and Vigorito (197l), using the high-amplitude sucking paradigm, that
I - and 4-month-old infants were capable of perceiving the voicing distinction
between /pa/ and /ba/ in a categorical-like manner. This result paralleled find-
ings from adults’ perception of speech and suggested at the time that infants were
born with mature speech perceptual abilities for a variety of speech sounds.
In the high-amplitude sucking paradigm, a repeating background stimulus
(e.g., ba) is presented to an infant, who is also provided with a nonnutritive
nipple on which to suck during testing. Once the infants’ baseline sucking rate is
established, the infant learns to suck in order to hear a targeted speech sound.
After a period of several minutes habituation occurs, followed by a change in the
background stimulus (e.g., changed to pa). If infants reliably increase their
sucking rate from habituation levels following the stimulus change, then a rea-
sonable inference is that the infants were able to discriminate between the two
stimuli. Infants’ categorical perception of speech sounds may be inferred from
their relative difficulty in discrimination of speech sound changes that are within
the same adult category (e.g., a change from a prototypical ba to a ba with a
shorter voice onset time and, thus, less voicing) in comparison to their discrimi-
nation of changes that cross adult speech sound category boundaries (e.g., from
ba to pa). The work of Eimas er al. (1971), in addition to work that followed up
and expanded upon it both in terms of the variety of speech contrasts tested and
the methods used (e.g., Eilers, Wilson, & Moore, 1977; Eimas & Corbit, 1973;
Kuhl, 1979; Trehub & Rabinovitch, 1972), suggested that typically developing
infants are born with relatively sophisticated abilities for speech perception.
These sophisticated perceptual abilities were initially interpreted as indications
that infants are born with a speech-specific capacity to successfully perceive
(i.e., discriminate) universally all of the world’s speech contrasts (also known as
the “innateness hypothesis”). Much theoretical and empirical progress has been
made since the early 1970s, however, and it is now apparent that categorical
auditory perception is not specific to speech. Categorical perception has been
demonstrated in music perception (Bums & Ward, 1978) as well as other non-
speech auditory patterns (e.g., Jusczyk, Pisoni, Walley, & Murray, 1980). In
fact, infrahuman species, such as the Japanese quail, have also shown the ability
to categorize speech contrasts (Kluender, Diehl, & Killeen, 1987; Kuhl & Miller,
1975), suggesting that categorical perception is nonspecific to speech and is not
unique to humans.
In addition to the speech- and species-specificity issues, progress has been

made in evaluation of the universality issue. A survey of the literature covering
speech perception of young typically developing infants reveals at least one
obvious fact, that not all speech contrasts are inherently easy to discriminate
(Best, in press; Eilers, Gavin, & Oller, 1982; Eilers, Morse, Gavin, & Oller,
1981; Eimas, 1974, 1975; Morse, Eilers, & Gavin, 1982; Trehub, 1976). For
example, the [a:t-a:d] distinction was found to be readily discriminable by
young infants but the [a:s-a:z] distinction was not (the colon denotes a length-
ened vowel) (Eilers, 1977). It is possible that the relative salience of acoustic
properties of the contrasts may account for perceptual difficulties with particular
speech contrasts. Infants may have success in perception of speech contrasts as a
function of how salient the contrasts are (Eilers, Wilson, & Moore, 1979), even
if the contrasts are highly dissimilar from the speech contrasts infants are learn-
ing in the process of linguistic specialization, such as contrasts involving clicks
found in Bantu languages as perceived by English-learning infants (Best,
McRoberts, & Sithole, 1988).
Although this overall picture of innate capacities for speech perception of
typically developing infants has evolved by dint of considerable research effort
since the early seventies, little effort has been devoted to investigation of the
early speech perception abilities of Down syndrome infants. Only two studies
have explored this area (Eilers, Bull, Oller, & Lewis, 1985; Eilers, Moroff, &
Turner, 1985). These studies were focused on the hypothesis that difficulties
experienced by other children with specific language deficits, specifically in the
perception of rapid changes in the speech spectrum (Tallal, 1976), might also be
experienced by Down syndrome children.
In the Eilers et al. studies, Down syndrome infants and children (13-37
months old) experienced difficulties in processing of rapid spectral information
relative to their ability to perceive events that occur over longer periods. In
speech, rapid events such as formant transitions are critical in cuing the nature of
consonants, for example, the difference between ba and ga. Down syndrome
infants may have difficulty in establishing perceptual knowledge for speech
because they have difficulty in tracking these acoustic properties that are impor-
tant cues to consonant identity. In addition, hearing loss commonly associated
with Down syndrome probably exacerbates this difficulty through one or more
mechanisms. A lack of or degraded auditory experience with speech events could
reduce sensitivity to rapid spectral changes in the auditory periphery or hinder
development of more central processing capacities required for tracking of spec-
tral changes that occur on the order of a few dozen milliseconds. Hearing status
is, of course, only one factor that may contribute to speech processing deficits.
Little is known about the specifics of Down syndrome itself or of the accompany-
ing behavioral deficits, which might affect speech processing capacities.
C. Linguistic Specialization
The process of linguistic specialization incorporates a broad variety of devel-

opmental processes. In this section, effects of linguistically specific experience
on speech perception as explored in psychoacoustic studies during the first 18
months of life will be discussed. Other speech reception abilities related to
perception, such as comprehension, will be discussed in the next section on
Production.
Adin and Pisoni (1980) sunimarized four models that have proved useful in a
global sense in guiding interpretation of developmental effects on speech percep-
tion. These models were referred to as the universal, attunement, perceptual
learning, and maturational theories.
According to universal theory, infants are born with the ability to discriminate
all of the speech contrasts of the world’s languages (cf. “innateness hypothesis”
above). The ability to discriminate among native speech contrasts is maintained
by linguistically specific experience, but the ability to process nonnative con-
trasts is lost.
Artunemenr theory is a weaker form of universal theory. Attunement theory
claims that infants are born with the ability to discriminate some proportion of
the world’s speech contrasts. The role of linguistically specific experience is to
sharpen, or tune, infants’ perceptual abilities for native speech contrasts. Percep-
tual ability for nonnative contrasts is left undeveloped.
Perceptual learning theory suggests that infants need specific early experience
with some speech contrasts within a critical time frame to induce development of
perceptual ability for those contrasts, a concept similar to imprinting of ducklings
on particular physical objects or persons (see Hess, 1972, for a review of imprint-
ing). Finally, maturational theory proposes that infants develop perceptual ability
for speech contrasts through a genetically predetermined schedule. The univer-
sal, attunement, perceptual learning, and maturational theories all have relevance
in some respect to data obtained before and since their elaboration, but the
perspective on relative contributions of the corresponding developmental pro-
cesses of maintenance (universal and attunement theories), facilitation (attune-
ment and perceptual learning theories), and biological maturation (maturation
theory) have been broadened during the 1980s.
Some of the most compelling empirical work on developmental processes in
early speech perception has been conducted by Werker and colleagues (Werker,
1989; Werker, Gilbert, Humphrey, & Tees, 1981). This research suggests that
perceptual reorganization for native speech sounds occurs in the first year of life.
Infants approximately 6 months of age appear to be superior to 8-month-olds, 10-
month-olds, and adults in perception of certain nonnative speech contrasts while
performing similarly to older subjects in perception of native speech contrasts. A
logical inference that can be made in light of such findings is that lack of specific
experience with nonnative contrasts results in decay of perceptual ability for

these contrasts with development. The results of Werker’s studies point to the
fact that perceptual loss plays a role in the development of speech perception and
communicative development.
In addition to perceptual loss, the facilitation of native speech contrast percep-
tion in comparison to the perception of nonnative speech contrasts has also been
explored with infants (Eilers et a l . , 1982; Eilers, Gavin, & Wilson, 1979). In
these studies, better perception of native contrasts by Spanish- and English-
learning infants was found, suggesting that performance on the native contrasts
was improved relative to performance on the nonnative contrasts with lin-
guistically specific experience.
Oller and Eilers ( 1983) explored cross-linguistic speech perception with older
children (2-year-olds) and found results similar to those obtained with infants.
These studies did not allow for clear interpretation of results concerning percep-
tual facilitation, however, because they were not developmental studies which
would have allowed for the tracking of perceptual improvement on native speech
contrasts over time if it did, in fact, occur. Perceptual facilitation is difficult to
study because even if subjects of different age groups are tested under precisely
the same conditions and with identical stimuli, better performance by older than
younger subjects can always be attributed to nonperceptual factors, such as
improved attention, memory, or different levels of interest in the testing pro-
cedure (see Kail, 1990). The identification of perceptual and cognitive factors
that contribute to developments in speech perception is a primary challenge of
research in this area.
Instead of examining perceptual improvement versus perceptual loss, the re-
cent work of Best and colleagues (reviewed in Best, in press) focuses on the
perception of nonnative speech contrasts in an effort to further illuminate factors
affecting perceptual ability for speech. In this work, nonnative speech contrasts
have been classified according to their similarity in terms of articulatory gestures
to native speech contrasts. Best er al. have conducted a series of studies suggest-
ing that 1-year-olds’ perception of nonnative contrasts are somewhat influenced
by linguistic experience. Apparently, nonnative contrasts may be assimilated to
native contrasts once sufficient native perceptual experience has been acquired.
Thus, listeners may attempt to process novel speech contrasts within the frame-
work of their acquired knowledge for native speech contrasts.
Although developmentally oriented psychoacoustic work has provided infor-
mation as to the course of early acquisition of typically developing infants’
speech perception ability, almost no similar developmental information is avail-
able on Down syndrome infants and young children. Following up on the find-
ings of Tallal (1976) and of Eilers, Bull et al. (1985) and Eilers, Moroff, and
Turner ( 1985), which suggested that the language deficits accompanying mental
retardation may result partly from difficulty in processing rapid spectral changes
62 Michael P. Lynch and Rebecca E. Eilers
in speech, Eilers and Oller (1080) compared 3-year-old severely retarded chil-
dren (two of the seven children had Down syndrome) with 7-month-old typically
developing infants in perception of rapidly changing versus static acoustic prop-
erties of speech segments.
In this study, speech contrasts involving discrimination of steady-state proper-
ties of vowels (beetl[bit] vs. bir/[bIt]) and discrimination of more rapidly chang-
ing speech formants of consonants (awa/[awa] vs. aral[ara]) were used. The
typically developing and retarded subjects did not differ in perceptual ability for
the rapid formant change contrast, but the retarded children were significantly
better than the typically developing infants in perception of the vowel contrast.
Although the developmental implications of this study are not entirely clear
because typically developing and Down syndrome subjects were not matched for
either chronological or mental age, these findings suggest that the retarded chil-
dren found the perception of relatively static acoustic characteristics of speech
(e.g., steady-state vowel formants) easier to process than rapidly changing for-
mant transitions. This result is consistent with the two previously mentioned
studies of speech perception by Down syndrome infants (Eilers, Bull er al.,
1985; Eilers, Moroff, & Turner, 1985), which found that the infants had difficulty
in formant tracking. Further studies that are designed, either longitudinally or
cross-sectionally, to elucidate developmental trends in speech perception in the
first few years of life by Down syndrome infants and children are needed,
however, to describe effects of Down syndrome on perceptual development for
speech.
D. From Ear and Eye

A relatively new area of study in early perceptual development for speech that
may yield particularly exciting results when Down syndrome persons are studied
involves the interaction of visual and auditory input. This area is of special
interest when considering early language development in Down syndrome be-
cause some research has suggested that the visual and auditory modalities are not
equally accessible to Down syndrome children. Scheffelin (1968) reported that
1 1-year-old Down syndrome children performed more poorly on paired-asso-
ciative learning tasks involving an auditory stimulus with a vocal response than
on tasks involving visual-vocal , auditory-motor, and visual-motor stimulus and
response channels. Another study also suggested that Down syndrome children
rely more heavily than typically developing children on gestures in imperative
and declarative expression (Greenwald & Leonard, 1979). In imperative ex-
pression, 16- to 54-month-old Down syndrome children would often look at and
reach for objects without accompanying vocalization, but typically developing
children rarely performed an imperative without vocalizing.
Kuhl and Meltzoff (1982) found that young typically developing infants (4-
month-olds) preferred to look at a face that was performing articulatory gestures

consonant with an auditory signal rather than a face producing a gesture that
would not result in the accompanying auditory signal. Additionally, the findings
of MacKain, Studdert-Kennedy, Spieker, and Stem (1983) suggested a role of
left-hemisphere specialization in cross-modal speech perception because infants’
looking preferences were reliably stronger when they were looking at a face
displayed on their right than on their left.
These studies led to at least two important interpretations. First, infants are
likely to use both auditory and visual information in their early acquisition of
language knowledge. Second, the quality of input from the visual and auditory
channels, as well as the level of integration between the two channels, might
affect language development. In light of the findings of Scheffelin (1968) and of
Greenwald and Leonard (1979) mentioned above, and, considering the fact that
Down syndrome is present at birth, interaction of auditory and visual speech
information in the development of early language of Down syndrome infants and
children is an area much in need of study. Such research might result in descrip-
tion of abilities or disabilities related to Down syndrome not only for speech
perception via audition but also for associative capacities across different sensory
modalities that could affect language development from birth. Intervention with
Down syndrome infants in processing bimodal speech information could, in fact,
prove beneficial in their later development of language skills.
E. Converging Evidence from Music Perception

The substantial body of research that has been devoted to describing early
development of perceptual ability for speech has been quite fruitful in identifying
some innate capacities and charting some effects of linguistic specialization. A
nagging problem that has weaved its thread throughout this area, however, has
been that researchers are often uncertain whether to attribute findings narrowly to
the perception of speech only, such as in a speech or language module (e.g., see
N o r , 1982; Liberman & Mattingly, 1989), or more broadly to general percep-
tual development. The study of early music perception is an area that has recently
begun to receive serious attention as a source of information about general
perceptual development complementary to speech perception research, because
music and speech share certain global characteristics of structure.
Speech and music both comprise universally employed features that have
important differences in their use across cultures. For example, in speech, the
consonant/vowel distinction is used in all of the world’s languages (Jakobson,
1941/ 1968). Specific languages, however, use only subsets of the universal
inventory of consonants and vowels. A parallel structural organization obtains in
music. In music, scales are used throughout the world (Dowling & Harwood,
1986). A musical scale is a finite set of pitches (usually five to seven), which are
generally confined within an octave (acoustic frequency ratio of 2 : 1). Specific

cultures, however, utilize different pitch sets for their scales, resulting in music
that may sound dissonant, or off-key, to the nonnative listener. Thus, speech and
music both have structures for which innate perceptual abilities may exist but for
which cultural specificity develops with experience.
Infants appear to possess some potentially innate capacities for perception of
universal musical structure. A procedure that has proved useful in assessing
music perception in infants has been an adaptation of the visually reinforced
infant speech discrimination paradigm (Eilers et al., 1977). In this paradigm, a
repeating background stimulus, such as a melody, is played repeatedly from a
loudspeaker. Infants can be readily trained to look toward the loudspeaker when
the stimulus is systematically manipulated (e.g., when the contour, or overall
pitch direction, of a melody is changed from up-down to down-up) in anticipa-
tion of a visual reinforcer.
Among the first innate perceptual capacities for music to be studied was the
perception of melodic contour. Melodic contour is the overall configuration of
successive directional changes in pitch within a melody (e.g., up-down, down-
up). Eight- to ten-month-old infants have successfully detected changes in me-
lodic contour in a variety of stimulus settings, suggesting that they are able to
mentally conserve the overall pitch configuration of a melody, even when the
absolute pitch level of the entire melody has been changed (Chang & Trehub,
1977; Trehub, Bull, & Thorpe, 1984). This finding could be important when
considering infants’ perception of prosodic characteristics of speech because the
ability to notice the overall pitch configurations of utterances, which can be
analogous to melodies in music, may be important in early language develop-
ment (Fkrnald, in press; Papousek, Papousek, & Bornstein, 1984).
Another potentially important parallel between speech and music involves
rhythm. The perception of rhythm is crucial in both speech and music because it
provides a means of “chunking” the stream of linguistically appropriate speech
sounds or culturally appropriate musical pitches into potentially important tem-
poral units. The first studies to shed light on processes of temporal perception
involved testing adult subjects’ detection of changes in intertone time periods
within prescribed temporal subgroups of a tone sequence or between subgroups.
Adults were better perceivers of within-subgroup than between-subgroup
changes, suggesting that the subgroups were perceptually cohesive (Fitzgibbons,
Pollatsek, & Thomas, 1974; Thorpe, 1985). Thorpe, Trehub, Morrongiello, and
Bull (1988) found that 6- to 8-month-old infants had similar relative success in
perception of within-subgroup temporal changes as opposed to between-sub-
group changes. This finding suggests that typically developing infants encode
not only overall configurations of melodic pitches but also temporal charac-
teristics of melodic pitches but also temporal characteristics of serially produced
auditory events.
PERSPECTIVES O N LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT 65
Recent work has investigated the possibility that perception of auditory events
in music can be affected by culturally specific listening experience. Lynch,
Eilers, Oller, and Urbano (1990) tested 6-month-olds in perception of a melody
based on two culturally familiar musical scales (Western major, Western minor)
and a culturally foreign scale (Javanese pelog). The infant subjects were divided
into two groups, one of which was trained on a culturally familiar scale (major)
and one of which was trained on the culturally foreign Javanese scale. Both
groups were able to notice a mistuning (acoustic frequency change) in one of the
melody notes reliably better than chance in all three scale contexts, and there
were no reliable differences in performance found across the scale contexts,
suggesting that infants are born with an equipotentiality for the perception of a
variety of pitch sets. This finding parallels the universality claim made in the area
of infant speech perception (e.g., Eimas et al., 1971; innateness hypothesis
mentioned above) and is consonant with findings from another music laboratory
using a different stimulus set (Trehub, Cohen, Thorpe, & Morrongiello, 1986).
Adult music perceivers in the Lynch et al. study did not show the same pattern of
performance across pitch set contexts as the infants. Adults were reliably better
perceivers of mistuning in the culturally familiar contexts than in the culturally
foreign context, suggesting their performance was affected by acculturation with
the musical interval patterns found in Western music (see also Lynch, Eilers,
Oller, Urbano, & Wilson, in press).
Two studies have now provided evidence that suggests that effects of culturally
specific listening experience are present in the first year of life. In both of these
studies, infants around 1 year of age were better able to detect alterations of
melody notes when the melody was based on a culturally familiar pitch set than
when it was based on a culturally unfamiliar set (Cohen, Thorpe, & Trehub,
1987; Lynch, Eilers, & Oller, 1990; Trehub, Thorpe, & Trainor, 1990). These
studies suggest that perceptual specificity for culturally familiar pitch sets may
begin to influence infants’ perception of music during the same time that similar
specificity begins to occur in the perception of speech sounds (Werker, 1989).
Another possibility is that the pitch sets that are native to Western music are
inherently easier to process than other pitch sets, resulting in better Western
perception by infants (Trehub ef al., 1990). Both the acculturation and the
inherent processing advantage hypotheses require further study.
An overall picture of perceptual development for speech and music emerges
from this discussion of parallel findings in the two areas. vpically developing
infants seem to be endowed with abilities to process coherent structure in audito-
ry events, and these abilities may be influenced by experience as early as the first
year of life. The dearth of information available on the similar developmental
period for Down syndrome infants, however, makes it impossible to determine
whether such abilities and experiential effects might be inherently affected by the
disorder.
Soraci, Barlean, Haenlein, and Baumeister (1986) suggested that retarded

adults (non-Down syndrome) were less sensitive to changes in quasirandom
sequences of musical pitches than nonretarded adults. In this study, subjects’
changes in heart rate from habituation levels were monitored in response to
changes in pitches from a sequence. A general idea as to the retarded listeners’
absolute level of sensitivity to auditory discrepancy was thus obtained. The
success of Eilers, Bull et al. (1985) Eilers, Moroff, and Turner ( 1985), and
Soraci et al. indicates that methodologies exist to perhaps study processing of
auditory relationships in young Down syndrome persons. Therefore, it would
seem worthwhile to pursue a broad description of Down syndrome infants’ and
childrens’ perception of auditory patterns, such as those related to music and
speech. This line of inquiry might reveal basic differences in auditory processing
related to Down syndrome that might be considered in development of early
intervention programs with this population.
Ill. PRODUCTION
Considerable progress has been made in recent years in the description of

speech production by typically developing infants and young children. Typically
developing infants produce systematic vocalizations that are related in many
ways to their first words. More research has been devoted to the description of
Down syndrome individuals’ speech production abilities early in life than to their
perceptual abilities. Several key differences between Down syndrome and typ-
ically developing infants and children are documented, in addition to noticeable
differences in voice quality (Pentz, 1987; Pentz & Gilbert, 1983).
A. Myths of Infant Vocal Development

To place the recent advances in understanding of infants’ and young childrens’
vocal development in historical perspective, it is useful to consider commonly
relied upon misconceptions, or myths, about infant vocal development that have
been pervasive over the years: methodology myth, discontinuity myth, babbling
drift myth, deaf infants’ babbling myth, and McCarthy’s myth. These myths
have, unfortunately, been referred to in standard texts on child development
(e.g., Biehler, 1981) and have been accepted as truths, although there are no data
to support their claims and considerable data that contradict them.
The methodology myth relies on the assumption that infant vocalizations are so
different from mature speech that the only reasonable description of infant speech
is accomplished via acoustic analysis (Lynip, 1951). Certainly, acoustic descrip-
tions of infant speech and adult speech are valuable and can be obtained concern-
ing a variety of characteristics, for example, formant frequencies, temporal
features, and amplitude envelopes, but there is no theoretically convincing man-

ner of determining what acoustic differences between infant and adult speech
actually mean developmentally. Oller (1986) proposed a “metaphonological”
approach, now referred to as “infraphonological” (Oller, 1991; Oller & Lynch,
in press), combining acoustic description with the developmental categorization
of infant vocalizations according to their relationships to mature speech. Essen-
tially, this approach describes vocalization types on a developmental continuum
from nasal-sounding, gruntlike quasiresonant sounds, which are the predominant
vocalizations of early infancy, to adultlike syllables, which are reliably produced
by typically developing infants beginning at 6-10 months of age. The in-
fraphonological description of infant vocalizations will be discussed further in
the treatment of stages of infant vocal development below.
The discontinuity myth, which claims that infant speech and adult speech are
unrelated, was fueled by extreme theoretical stances born of unsophisticated
descriptive technology. Among these stances were that infant babbling is utterly
random and unorganized (Jakobson, 194111968; Lenneberg, 1962), infants bab-
ble the sounds of all languages (Jakobson, 194111968; Osgood, 1953), and there
is no phonetic relationship between babbling and young childrens’ speech (Jak-
obson, 1941/ 1968). Information is now available, however, that contradicts each
of these stances. First, it is apparent from a number of studies of infant vocal
development through the first 18 months of life that the vocalizations of infants
proceed through a developmental sequence from production of developmentally
primitive sounds to the onset of substantial production of mature syllables, for
example, buba and mama (Oller, 1986; Stark, 1980). Second, infants certainly
do not babble the sounds of all of the world’s languages. There are many sounds
that infants have not been reported to make in any quantity, such as lingual trills
(with tongue tip), consonant clusters, and final consonants. Finally, several stud-
ies have reported that there is, indeed, a phonetic relationship between babbling
and young childrens’ speech. The core units of babbling (e.g., pa, ba, ma) are
among the predominant sounds used in early meaningful speech (Cruttenden,
1970; Menyuk, 1968; Oller, Wieman, Doyle, & Ross, 1976; Vihman, Ferguson,
& Elbert, 1986).
Babbling drift, which presumes that infant babbling gradually comes to resem-
ble the phonology of the child’s language community, is not strongly supported
by available data. Infants tend to prefer and produce most often those sounds that
are relatively universal (Oller et a l . , 1976), and infants who will eventually learn
different languages do not appear to babble differently as perceived by observers
who are blind to the infants’ language community (e.g., Atkinson, MacWhinney,
& Stoel, 1969; Preston, Yeni-Komshian, & Stark, 1967; Thevenin, Eilers, Oller,
& Lavoie, 1985). Some recent evidence from a study of acoustic summaries
(long-term spectrum analyses) of adult and child utterances from French, Al-
gerian, Arabic, and Cantonese linguistic environments, however, is suggestive
that babbling drift may subtly affect infant vowel productions between 8 and 10
months of age (de Boysson-Bardies, Sagart, Halle, & Durand, 1986). This work
has reopened investigation of the babbling drift issue, and further work may
clarify babbling drift effects on infant vocal production.
The deaf babbling myth is possibly the most egregious of the myths because it
may have affected the vigor with which potential interventions were pursued. It
has been widely believed that deaf infants babble similarly to normally hearing
infants in the first year of life and then cease to do so (Lenneberg, Rebelsky, &
Nichols, 1965; Mavilya, 1969:).Recent data have clearly indicated that deaf
infants begin reliably producing mature syllables (baba, dadu) considerably later
than do normally hearing infants, 6-10 months (Oller & Eilers, 1988). And,
although hearing is not essential for the eventual development of mature syllable
production (Lynch, Oller, & Steffens, 1989), it is definitely of great importance
for the unhindered speech development early in life.
McCarthy’s myth (McCarthy, 1952) simply attributed the quality of infant
vocalizations to mechanical forces acting on the child’s vocal apparatus. This
myth depended on the assumption that the child’s posture (e.g., upright or
supine) would affect what kind of vocalizations the child produced. No data have
been obtained in support of this view. A few studies have addressed this hypoth-
esis by manipulating infants’ physical orientation (e.g., prone versus supine), but
this manipulation did not appear to affect the types of syllables produced by
typically developing children (Bosma, 1972; Oller, 198 1; Stark & Nathanson,
1974). This myth has been investigated only with typically developing infants,
however, and, considering the hypotonia that generally accompanies Down syn-
drome, it is possible that physical orientation could affect the vocalizations of
Down syndrome infants. McCarthy’s myth should be explored in greater detail
with disordered populations in empirical work.
This review of widely believed myths is intended to serve two purposes. One
of these is to identify these beliefs as unfounded so that the reader will be aware
of their lack of empirical support. Another is to provide a backdrop for the
description of the vocal development of typically developing and Down syn-
drome infants and children.
B. Maturation and Experience

The development of early vocal production can be divided into three primary
accomplishments. In the first year or so of life, infants progress from production
of mostly developmentally primitive vocalizations to the reliable production of
mature, prototypical syllables. Soon after the accomplishment of mature syllable
production, the first words generally appear, intermingled with babbling. Finally,
at some point in the third year of life, words are combined, suggesting the child
is acquiring some degree of syntactic knowledge. Each of these periods will be
surveyed here for typically developing and Down syndrome infants and children.
PERSPECTIVES O N LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT 69
1. DEVELOPMENT OF MATURE SYLLABLE PRODUCTION
Oller (in press) summarized the increasing agreement that is being reached
concerning the course of vocal development for typically developing infants.
Five important levels of vocal development in the first 18 months have been
observed for infants in a number of different laboratories and observational
settings (Elbers & Ton, 1985; Oller, 1986; Stark, 1980; Stoel-Gammon &
Cooper, 1984; Vihman & Miller, 1988). These stages, of course, involve overlap
in ages to account for individual differences, but the predominant vocalizations
produced by infants at each age level generally conform to those indicated for
each stage. The vocalizations of each stage are described here along the lines of
an infraphonological approach (Oller, 1991; Oller & Lynch, in press), combining
the classification of vocalizations into categories, such as quasiresonant or can-
onical, with acoustic description.
The phonation srage (0-2 months) involves the production of quasiresonant
sounds, which are characterized by normal phonation (no distortion) with the
vocal tract in a relatively at rest position. Quasiresonant sounds are very nasal
sounding, mostly because of their composition of predominantly low-frequency
acoustic energy. The primitive articulation stage (1-4 months) involves the
production of quasiresonant sounds accompanied by articulations in the back of
the vocal tract. These sounds are commonly referred to as goos, coos, or gurgles.
The expansion stage (3-8 months) involves the production of a much wider
variety of sounds than the previous two stages. In this stage, the reliable produc-
tion of vowellike sounds marks the child’s beginning capacity to approximate
mature speech sounds. These vowellike sounds differ from quasiresonant sounds
in that they consist of acoustic energy across a relatively broad range of the
frequency spectrum and are, therefore, less nasal. In this stage, infants tend to
experiment with the pitch range by producing high-pitched squeals and low-
pitched growls, experiment with loudness by producing yells and whispers,
begin to produce raspberries (labial lingual and bilabial), and attempt to combine
consonant-like articulations with their newly acquired vowellike sounds. At-
tempts at consonant/vowel combinations, however, generally result in syllables
in which transitions from consonants to vowels are slower than in prototypical
syllables. These slowed-transition syllables have been termed marginal babbles
because they are almost, but not quite, like mature syllables.
The canonical syllable stage (5- 10 months) is characterized by the first reli-
able production of prototypical syllables (e.g., ba, pa). Mature syllables such as
these have been termed canonical because they are syllables that are commonly
used in adult speech as the building blocks of words. The chief improvement that
infants make in progressing to reliable production of canonical syllables is con-
trol over production of the transition from consonant-like elements to vowellike
elements, resulting in more rapid transitions that often generate mature-sounding
syllables.
Finally, the integrative stage (9- 18 months) involves the combination of can-
onical babbling with first words. Additionally, long strings of babbling occur that
can be adult-sounding because of their prosodic characteristics (termed variously
jargon and gibberish).
The development of this stage model has accomplished at least two important
goals that facilitate study of disabled populations, such as Down syndrome
infants and children. First, it has provided a detailed account of early speech in
typically developing infants, thus providing a framework for interpreting the
early speech development of Down syndrome infants and children. Second, it
has resulted in the development of a descriptive framework for analysis of a
broad range of infant vocalizations so infant utterances may be classified in terms
of their developmental status.
In an early attempt to study the early speech development of Down syndrome
infants, B. L. Smith and Oller (1981) conducted a longitudinal study of Down
syndrome and typically developing infants by collecting vocalization samples for
each group at 3-month intervals from birth to 15 months of age. This study did
not reveal any systematic differences between the groups in onset of reduplicated
babbling (e.g., bababa) or patterns of place of articulation of consonant-like
elements. Both groups generally produced more back consonants (e.g., goos)
than other consonants early in the study and more front consonants (e.g., [ba]
and [da]) than other consonants later in the study. An additional analysis did not
reveal differences between the Down syndrome and typically developing groups
in vowel height. Both groups produced more low (e.g., [a] as in bother) and mid
(e.g., [el as in bake) vowels than high (e.g., [i] as in “beer”)vowels across the
study.
The findings of B. L. Smith and Oller (1981) agreed very broadly with those
of Dodd (1972), who failed to find differences between typically developing and
Down syndrome infants in overall vocal output. Older Down syndrome children
(3-4 years), however, appear to be delayed in comparison to typically develop-
ing children in application of several phonological processes. Down syndrome
children appear to require a longer time to reduce certain phonological errors in
their speech, for example, final stop devoicing (e.g., changing Bob to bop) and
initial cluster simplification (e.g., changing star to far)(B. L. Smith and Stoel-
Gammon, 1983; Van Borsel, 1988). Additionally, Down syndrome childrens’
general phonological abilities have been found to be commensurate with their
general language ability (Stoel-Gammon, 1980). It should be kept in mind that
Down syndrome childrens’ absolute levels of both phonological and language
abilities were delayed in comparison to those of typically developing children
matched for chronological age.
Dodd ( 1976) suggested that Down syndrome childrens’ phonological errors
may be more likely to occur in spontaneous than imitative vocalizations because
of difficulty in planning of articulatory movements. Recent work by Tager-
Flusberg and Calkins (1990), however, suggests that imitation does not provide a
benefit to Down syndrome children, albeit in a different speech realm (syntactic
development). The possible benefits of imitation on phonological development
clearly require further study. Such research with Down syndrome children could
potentially describe sources of delays in developmental patterns of phonological
processes.
One of the admitted limitations on interpretation of the results of the study of
prelinguistic vocal development by B. L. Smith and Oller (1981) was that their
Down syndrome subjects were enrolled in a special educational program that
may have optimized their vocal development. This arrangement may have ob-
scured differences between typically developing and Down syndrome infants that
may be apparent in more common circumstances. In an attempt to further study
potential differences in the vocal development of Down syndrome and typically
developing infants, Lynch, Oller, Eilers, and Basinger (1990) studied typically
developing and Down syndrome infants who were not enrolled in special educa-
tional programs. The major findings of this study were that the onset of substan-
tial production of canonical syllables for Down syndrome infants (mean age at
onset = 9 months) was delayed in comparison with typically developing infants
(mean age at onset = 7 months). Perhaps more importantly, once the onset of
substantial canonical production was noted, the Down syndrome infants were
less consistent in maintaining their levels of canonical production through the
end of the first year than the typically developing infants. This finding suggests
that perhaps the delays in motor development characteristic of Down syndrome
infants and children (see Gibson, 1978) may result in problems with control over
mature syllable production once this production has been established. These
infants have continued to be followed longitudinally, and data on their vocal and
motor development will eventually be available through at least 30 months of
age.
2. FIRST WORDS AND SYNTACTIC DEVELOPMENT
A number of recent studies (e.g., Cardoso-Martins, Mervis, & Mervis, 1985;
Miller, 1988; Miller, Miolo, Sedey, Pierce, & Rosin, 1989; Miller, Miolo, Sedey,
& Rosin, 1990; Miller, Rosin, Pierce, Miolo, & Sedey, 1989) have explored in
detail the vocal production of Down syndrome children from the end of the first
year through 4 years of age. These studies have illuminated some intriguing
asymmetries in development among verbal and nonverbal capacities in Down
syndrome children.
Miller and his colleagues are investigating longitudinal relationships among
language, nonverbal cognition, and speech motor control in Down syndrome
infants and children from 0 to 60 months in chronological age. In the studies
completed thus far, language production and comprehension were assessed in
terms of such measures as mean length of utterance in morphemes, number of
different words produced in free speech samples, phonetic inventory, percentage

of consonants correct, Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, and the Test of Auditory
Comprehension of Language. The children’s developmental status as examined
by these language measures was compared with their mental age as determined
by a number of standardized procedures, such as the Bayley Mental Scale,
Stanford-Binet Revised (nonverbal subscales), and Symbolic Play assessments.
The analyses conducted in the Miller et al. studies are complex, and details
can be found in Miller (1987, 1988). The broad developmental patterns that have
emerged from these analyses, however, are of considerable topical interest to the
present discussion. One of the most intriguing findings to arise from this work is
that children with Down syndrome appear to have a specific deficit in language
development. Mental age-matched Down syndrome and typically developing
children score similarly in tests of nonverbal cognition up to about 4 years of
chronological age, but Down syndrome children lag behind typically developing
children in this age period in productive and receptive language (Miller, 1987).
Cunningham, Glenn, Wilkinson, and Sloper ( 1983, Greenwald and Leonard
(1979), and L. Smith and von Tetzchner (1986) obtained findings suggesting that
this disparity between language and nonverbal cognition tended to become worse
with age from early to late childhood.
Many factors could potentially contribute to a specific language deficit in
Down syndrome (see Miller, 1987; Stoel-Gammon, 1990), perhaps the most
influential of which is hearing status, which could affect language without influ-
encing nonverbal cognition. The possibility that the hearing loss typically experi-
enced by Down syndrome children might be partially responsible for a specific
language deficit cannot be underestimated and warrants further investigation.
Another contributing factor might be speech-specific motor difficulties. Down
syndrome children often have structural differences in comparison to typically
developing children in the speech apparatus, such as small or retracted maxilla,
occlusion and gaps between teeth, and tongue hypertrophy (Miller, 1988). These
differences in structure could result in articulatory difficulties for Down syn-
drome children that may hinder language development.
The contributions of motor difficulties to language development in Down
syndrome will require further study to evaluate fully, but two studies have al-
ready provided hints that the overall motor skill status of Down syndrome chil-
dren influences language. L. Smith and von Tetzchner (1986) reported a positive
relationship between gross motor behavior at 2 years of age and language skills at
3 years for Down syndrome children. Lynch, Oller et al. (1990) found that once
Down syndrome infants had begun production of substantial numbers of mature
syllables (around 9 months of age), their levels of mature syllable production
were erratic in comparison to typically developing infants, which suggests that
difficulties with control over speech articulators may be evident early in life for
Down syndrome children.
In addition to the language specificity of delays in Down syndrome children in

comparison to mental age, Miller and colleagues have discovered developmental
asynchronies between different language abilities in Down syndrome children.
Three profiles of relationships among language comprehension, production, and
mental age emerged from studies conducted by Miller’s group.
In Profile 1, language production and comprehension skills of Down syn-
drome children corresponded well with increases in mental age, which is similar
to the profile of typically developing children. Note, however, that Down syn-
drome children were delayed when compared with typically developing children
matched for chronological age. In Profile 2, language production was delayed
relative to comprehension and mental age. Profile 1 accounted for 50% and
Profile 2 accounted for 25% of the children studied. In a third profile, the
remaining 25% of the children had delays in both production and comprehension
relative to mental age. When the children with the three profiles were followed
longitudinally for 24 months, Profiles 2 and 3 (particularly Profile 2) began to
account for a greater proportion of the children in the study. This finding sug-
gested that, with increasing age, language development, especially language
production, did not keep pace with progress in nonverbal cognition.
Miller and colleagues also have studied relationships between mean length of
utterance in morphemes (MLU) and vocabulary size. The MLU has been widely
used as an indicator of syntactic development because it is simple to obtain but
correlates well with early syntactic milestones (Brown, 1973). Typically devel-
oping children first begin to combine morphemes when they put together words
in the latter half of the second year. From that point MLU is highly correlated
with age and, consequently, vocabulary growth (Miller & Chapman, 1981).
MLU is also highly correlated with age in Down syndrome children (Rondal,
Giotto, Bredart, & Bachelet, 1988). Down syndrome and typically developing
children differ, however, concerning relationships between age and vocabulary
growth, as well as between MLU and vocabulary growth.
The different age and vocabulary growth relationships of typically developing
and Down syndrome children were studied by Cardoso-Martins et af. (1985). In
this study, Down syndrome and typically developing children in the second year
of life progressed similarly through Stages 5 and 6 of sensorimotor development
(e.g., attainment of object permanence and acquisition of means-end relations).
The Down syndrome childrens’ receptive and productive vocabularies, however,
were both delayed in comparison to those of the typically developing children at
completion of each stage of sensorimotor development.
The different MLU and vocabulary growth relationships of typically develop-
ing and Down syndrome children were studied by Miller, Budde, Bashir, and
LaFollette (1987; see also Miller, 1988). When typically developing children 20
months of age and older were matched with Down syndrome children on mental
age, the typically developing children produced a greater number of different
words in speech samples than the Down syndrome children. Parent reports of
vocabulary use agreed with this finding. When the typically developing and
Down syndrome children were matched for MLU, however, a different pattern
emerged. The Down syndrome children produced approximately 25% more
unique words than the typically developing children, suggesting the Down syn-
drome children had larger vocabularies than MLU-matched typically developing
children. These findings indicate that Down syndrome childrens’ nonverbal men-
tal age is not predictive of either semantic development, as measured by vocabu-
lary size, or syntactic development, as indicated by growth in MLU. Addi-
tionally, it seems that semantic development outstrips syntactic development in
Down syndrome children because their vocabulary size is greater than that of
typically developing children when MLUs are equivalent.
These developmental asynchronies between nonverbal cognition and lan-
guage, and also between semantic and syntactic development, highlight the
variegated nature of effects of Down syndrome on communicative abilities.
Language development in Down syndrome should not be treated as a generic
problem. In this vein, it should be noted that the developmental asynchronies
uncovered thus far have been observed for language production only. Therefore,
these asynchronies could arise in part because of productive difficulties, such as
speech motor control, which would not necessarily be directly associated with
the child’s internal language knowledge. If such asynchronies are found to exist
in language comprehension, it would more conclusively indicate that the lan-
guage learning capaciries of young Down syndrome children differ in com-
parison to those of typically developing children. The analytic approach taken by
Miller’s group holds promise in elucidating such parallels that might exist be-
tween production and comprehension. Their research may also lead to effective
interventions based on the specific language capacities of Down syndrome per-
sons.
C. Infant Cry
Cry is possibly the earliest form of communication used by infants. Infants use
cry as a means of communicating their biological state (e.g., hunger, distress).
Thus, in addition to prosodic characteristics (e.g., duration, intensity, pitch) that
might be used to communicate affect, cry has a referential component. This
combination of prosody and reference parallels the structure of later meaningful
speech. Through transmission of information via cry, infants engage in commu-
nicative interaction with their caregivers. Therefore, cry can serve a number of
functions, including promotion of proximity with caregivers (Bowlby, 1969),
expression of survival needs, and also as a medium for learning canons of
interaction (Lester, 1984). In fact, Bell and Ainsworth (1972) found that mothers
who responded more quickly to their infants’ crying in the first year had infants
who cried less in the second year than later-responding mothers, suggesting that
the foundations for interaction patterns may be established early in life.
Cry has been studied from two general perspectives that constitute an overall
biosocial model. One of these perspectives has been as a window on the biolog-
ical integrity of the infant because cry is the manifestation of complex interac-
tions between the central nervous system, respiratory system, peripheral nervous
system, and various muscles (see Golub & Corwin, 1985). The other perspective
has been as an influence on the infant’s caregiving environment (see Lester,
Corwin, & Golub, 1988).
Cry as an indicator of biological integrity has particular relevance to Down
syndrome because of the hypotonicity that accompanies the syndrome. Acoustic
studies revealed that Down syndrome infants’ cries had longer latencies, lower
pitch, flatter pitch contours, greater distortion, greater stuttering, and more
nasality than typically developing infants’ cries (Fisichelli & Karelitz, 1963;
Karelitz & Fisichelli, 1962; Lind, Vuorenkoski, Rosberg, Partanen, & Wasz-
Hockert, 1970). These acoustic characteristics are consistent with the idea that
Down syndrome infants’ hypotonicity would affect the laryngeal musculature.
In an effort to understand effects of cry on parents and, thus, the caregiving
environment, studies of adults’ perception of infant cry samples have been con-
ducted. These studies have indicated that adult listeners respond to infant cries
along a number of dimensions, such as urgency, distress, sickness, arousal,
discomfort, among others, and several acoustic correlates of cries have been
associated with these dimensions (Gustafson & Green, 1989; Zeskind & Lester,
1978). Specific to Down syndrome, Freudenberg, Driscoll, and Stem (1978)
found that adult observers rated Down syndrome infants’ cries as more “unpleas-
ant” than those of typically developing infants. This response on the part of
adults to cries of Down syndrome infants might conceivably affect parenting
behavior toward these infants by functioning as a negative reinforcer. Freuden-
berg et al. also found that typically developing infants’ cries were interpreted to
mean that these infants were in greater need of attention than the Down syndrome
infants. Therefore, caregivers of Down syndrome infants may be motivated to
stop their infants’ crying, but not necessarily in an immediate fashion because the
infants’ need for attention may not be conveyed.
Further studies of the cries of Down syndrome infants would require particular
attention to methodology because these infants do not spontaneously cry as much
as typically developing infants (Lind et al., 1970). An often-used procedure is to
obtain samples of pain cries by audiotaping infants’ cry responses to routine
medical procedures, such as the heel stick applied in evaluating infants for
phenylketonuria (Lester et al., in press). Another means of obtaining samples of
pain cries is to audiotape infants’ vocal responses either to injections or to
removal of electrodes from the skin following heart rate or respiratory monitor-
ing (B. M. Lester, personal communication, 1991).
An alternative to analyzing pain cries might be to monitor Down syndrome

infants’ cries during administration of the Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale
(Brazelton, 1984). This scale involves elicitation of a series of infant reflexes,
which progressively disturb infants and sometimes result in crying. This crying,
like that in response to a pain stimulus, would not be spontaneous. It would be
analogous to the types of crying infants generally produce during typical caregiv-
ing (e.g., diaper changing). Once Down syndrome infants’ cry samples are
collected, many technological advances, such as real-time spectrography, could
be exploited to further describe characteristics of cry that are specifically related
to Down syndrome (see Lester & Boukydis, 1985, for reviews of analysis tech-
niques). Additionally, recent evidence suggests that acoustic characteristics of
cry could be used as predictors of developmental outcome (Lester, 1987), and the
possibility that specific cognitive or linguistic outcomes might be predicted by
cry characteristics of Down syndrome infants should be investigated.
IV. RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN PERCEPTION

AND PRODUCTION
A. “Motherese”
Recently, Fernald and colleagues have made progress in describing the nature
of “motherese,” which is the syntactically, semantically, and phonologically
altered form of speech that adults use when speaking to infants (Snow, 1977).
Motherese is important because it makes up a large part of the linguistic input
received by infants and may, therefore, serve to influence the foundations of
language development. It may also, like cry, be important in forming the basis
for caregiver-child interactions because it could serve also to draw the infant’s
attention to the speaker.
This possibility was raised by Femald (1985), who demonstrated that typically
developing infants preferred to listen to motherese rather than adult-directed
speech. Additionally, Fernald and Simon (1984) and krnald and Kuhl (1987)
examined the prosodic characteristics of motherese and found that the fundamen-
tal frequency pattern, or pitch contour, of motherese was particularly important
in determining infant auditory preference. This finding is intriguing in light of
Trehub, Bull, and Thorpe (1984), who suggested that infants were able to per-
ceive melodic contours in music. The perception of pitch contours may be an
innate capacity that developed in response to the infant’s potentially instinctive
need to communicate without having acquired the ability to use words. It would
be very interesting to study Down syndrome infants’ preferences for motherese,
as well as to study Down syndrome infant-directed speech of adults, to better
describe the early communicative experience of Down syndrome infants.
6. Adult-Infant Interaction
Given infants’ melodic perception abilities as demonstrated for music and their
preference for listening to motherese, it is not surprising that infants interact with
adults as a function of the adults’ production of different pitch contours in speech
(see Papousek et al., 1984, for a review). Adults use a small number of dis-
tinctive pitch contours in infant-directed speech, such as a sharply rising contour
and also a sharply rising contour with a gradual fall in pitch (see Papousek et a l.,
1984). Bornstein (1981) suggested that the finite set of intonation contours in
infant-directed speech may serve to establish them as perceptual prototypes, once
learned, allowing infants to extract more detailed information as to the content of
the adult message, such as phonetic segment characteristics. Recent work on the
perception of musical phrases (Krumhansl & Jusczyk, 1990) and phrasing in
speech (Kemler-Nelson, Hirsh-Pasek, Jusczyk, & Wright-Cassidy, 1989), in
which infants preferred to hear well-phrased rather than ill-phrased music and
speech, also suggests that gestalt characteristics of the communicative acoustic
stream may be broken down perceptually by infants in accordance with universal
principles of phrasing.
Although adults address infants using some version of motherese, the adult-
infant communicative link is bidirectional, as suggested by the tendency of
infants to imitate facial gestures (Meltzoff & Moore, 1977) and to imitate adult
behavior as well as speech (Papousek e? al., 1984), and their ability to match
sung pitches (Kessen, Levine, & Wendrich, 1979). Thus, typically developing
infants are capable not only of receiving information through the perceptual
channel but also of forming schematic notions of response and interplay.
Interactions between caregivers and Down syndrome children differ in many
respects from those between caregivers and typically developing children. Sever-
al investigations have reported that mothers of Down syndrome infants talk faster
and with greater overall density to their 1- to 2-year-old children than do mothers
of chronological age-matched typically developing children (Buckholt, Ruther-
ford, & Goldberg, 1978; Buium, Rynders, & Turnure, 1974). Jones (1977) also
found a greater incidence of communicative overlap, or “vocal clashing,” with
Down syndrome infants and young children than with typically developing chil-
dren matched developmentally. Peskett and Wootton’s (1985) pilot study with
four Down syndrome subjects (two less communicatively advanced, two more
communicatively advanced relative to each other) suggested that occurrence of
vocal clashing may be related to communicative ability, at least for 3-year-olds.
Berger and Cunningham (1983) found in a longitudinal study an age-related
increase in vocal clashing between 0- to 6-month-old Down syndrome infants
and their mothers in comparison to typically developing infants. Thus, when
Down syndrome infants and children are spoken to they receive a greater volume
78 Michael P. Lynch and Rebecca E . Eilers
of speech stimulation and often clash and overlap with their mothers when
vocalizing themselves.
There are further interesting differences in the communicative interaction pat-
terns between typically developing infants and their mothers and between Down
syndrome infants and their mothers. Berger and Cunningham (1983) found that
the average durations of their typically developing infants’ nonvegetative vo-
calization increased steadily over the first 4 months of life when the infants were
engaged in face-to-face interaction with their mothers, with a marked decrease
over the subsequent 2 months. The same pattern was not found for Down syn-
drome infants. The average durations of the Down syndrome infants’ vocaliza-
tions were considerably shorter than those of the typically developing infants
over the first 3 months, with a marked increase over the subsequent 3 months.
This finding is intriguing because it raises the possibility of a cylical pattern of
vocal output in mother-infant interactions, which might serve some purpose in
the child’s developing ability to process and produced speech. Infants may pro-
ceed through periods of high vocal output in interaction as a means of exercising
a communicative instinct. Periods of lower interactive vocal output may occur as
they restructure their schemas for speech and pay greater attention to adult speech
models.
Another possibility is that schema development in nonspeech realms, such as
those regarding motor skills, could influence the potential cycling of vocal out-
put. Typically developing infants may begin life in a “high-output mode” for the
first 4 months and subsequently proceed to a “low-output mode.” The results of
Berger and Cunningham suggest that the pattern for Down syndrome infants may
be reversed, beginning with low output. Differences in the manner in which
mothers of typically developing and Down syndrome infants interact with their
children may serve to alter a potentially natural cycle of vocal output in interac-
tion for Down syndrome infants. For example, the vocal stimulation provided by
the mothers of typically developing infants generally decreased with age in the
Berger and Cunningham study, but the opposite was true for Down syndrome
infants. Additionally, communicative overlap, or “vocal clashing,” increased
with age for the Down syndrome infants but not for the typically developing
infants. Cardoso-Martins and Mervis (1985) also found that mother-child in-
teractions were predominantly mother-directed for Down syndrome infants and
young children but child-directed for typically developing infants. Mothers of
Down syndrome children used more imperatives and fewer child-oriented labels
for objects than mothers of typically developing infants and children. A longitu-
dinal study expanding on the 0-6 months age range of Berger and Cunningham
would clarify the issue of cycles in vocal output of typically developing and
Down syndrome infants in interactive settings.
In addition to the possibility of cycles of vocal output, studies of adult-child
interactions involving Down syndrome and typically developing infants and chil-
dren yield a recurrent theme consistent with the findings of Cardoso-Martins and
Mervis (1985), that adults are more directing with Down syndrome youngsters
(e.g., Buium et al., 1974). For example, mothers of Down syndrome infants and
children will often use larger numbers of imperatives than mothers of typically
developing children. The fact that vocal clashing is more prominent in Down
syndrome child-mother interactions than in typically developing childrens’ in-
teractions with their mothers suggests that perhaps parents notice that their Down
syndrome infants have difficulty with turn taking and may need greater assistance
and direction to take part in communication. It is also possible, however, that
adults are predisposed to be more directive with Down syndrome infants and
children because they assume that because the children are handicapped they will
need greater direction in any circumstances. These issues could be studied further
by combining laboratory observation methods, which could be used to verify
results concerning vocal clashing and directiveness, and perhaps intervention
studies, which may provide information regarding the effects of directiveness on
communication. Studies of father-child interaction would also be of use in
further describing the Down syndrome child’s communicative environment.
Differences in communicative environments between typically developing and
Down syndrome infants and children are of both theoretical and clinical interest.
Such differences could, in addition to internal factors such as hearing loss and
speech motor difficulties, partially explain a specific deficit in language develop-
ment related to Down syndrome (Miller, 1988). This possibility is supported by
the results of L. Smith and von Tetzchner (1986), who highlighted a positive
relationship between the linguistic structure of mothers’ speech to their Down
syndrome infants at I7 months of age and the childrens’ expressive and produc-
tive language at 3 years of age.
In this study, mothers’ uses of WH- questions, sound expansions (repetition or
adding to child utterances), imitations, and answers to Down syndrome chil-
drens’ utterances were related to later expressive and productive language out-
come. Thus, the richness of the linguistic content of a Down syndrome infants’
communicative environment may affect language development. The commu-
nicative environment of Down syndrome infants and children might also be used
as an avenue of language intervention. Down syndrome infants are capable of
some imitation of prosodic speech features (Reichle, Siegel, & Rettie, 1985),
suggesting that communicative channels between adults and infants are open to
at least some degree on a reciprocal basis.
Additional encouragement for imitation as a potential tool in early language
intervention with Down syndrome children was provided by Mahoney and Snow
(1983). In this study, when mothers interacted with Down syndrome infants and
children in a structured manner designed to increase vocabulary, the childrens’
expressive language improved. This finding was particularly intriguing in light
of a relationship between pretraining sensorimotor development and eventual
ao Michael P . Lynch and Rebecca E. Eilers
expressive language ability of the Down syndrome children at 3 years, which

suggests that nonverbal cognitive status might be predictive of the potential
effectiveness of language intervention early in life for Down syndrome children.
The prospects for imitation therapy are not entirely positive, however, because
the findings of Dunst (1988) suggested that Down syndrome infants’ develop-
ment of imitation of speech segments and novel words was delayed for chrono-
logical age-matched Down syndrome infants in relation to typically developing
infants. In spite of this potential limitation on Down syndrome infants’ imitative
capacities for speech, imitation therapy holds considerable promise and deserves
further investigation.
V. CONCLUSIONS
Typically developing infants and children achieve major perceptual and pro-
ductive developments in the first few years of life. Infants appear to be endowed
with relatively sophisticated perceptual abilities for auditory events. Infants can
perceive speech sounds in a categorical-like manner, combine visual and audito-
ry input in speech perception, and extract underlying rhythmic and musical
interval structures from tone sequences. With sufficient perceptual experience,
infants develop specialized knowledge of the speech sounds of their native lan-
guage and at least some aspects of their native musical structure.
In the productive realm, typically developing infants achieve substantial pro-
duction of mature (canonical) syllables by about 7 months of age on the average.
First words appear in the second year, and, once words are combined beginning
in the latter half of the second year, mean length of utterance in morphemes is
highly correlated with age and, thus, cognitive development, up to about 3.5
years.
Studies of early language development in Down syndrome children can be
divided into several categories based on differences in approach. The few studies
of infancy have been conducted in two areas, psychophysically oriented investi-
gations of dynamic versus static information in the speech spectrum (e.g., Eilers,
Bull et a l . , 1985) and studies of premeaningful speech, or babbling (e.g., B. L.
Smith & Oller, 1981; Lynch, Oller er a l . , 1990). These studies have suggested a
basic speech processing capability (better processing of static than dynamic
spectral information) and the onset of mature syllable production at about 9
months of age in Down syndrome infants, but many questions regarding speech
perception and production in the first 2 years of life remain unanswered.
In the perceptual realm, it has proved difficult to test Down syndrome infants
younger than 1 year in speech tasks using available methodologies. For example,
in the visually reinforced infant speech discrimination paradigm (Eilers et al.,
1977), Down syndrome infants younger than 1 year seem unable to establish the
necessary connection between a change in the auditory stimulus (e.g., from awa
to ara) and the presentation of a visual reinforcer. In other words, it is difficult to

train Down syndrome infants to perform the basic responses required in the
procedure, even with easily discriminable speech contrasts (e.g., ba versus wa).
Therefore, little is known about the perceptual abilities of Down syndrome
infants in the first year of life. Additionally, Down syndrome infants may experi-
ence difficulty in the integration of sensory information across different
modalities, such as vision and audition, which could hinder their processing of
speech information at very early stages of development. New methodologies,
perhaps similar to the heart rate monitoring procedure used by Soraci et al.
(1986), which will allow for testing of young Down syndrome infants in a variety
of perceptual tasks, are needed to clarify the capacities of Down syndrome
infants.
In the productive realm in infancy, there are no unequivocal accounts for the
later onset of mature syllable production in Down syndrome than typically devel-
oping infants. Down syndrome infants may begin canonical babbling late be-
cause of hearing loss or possibly as a function of difficulties in speech motor
control. These two factors could interact, influence babbling development in
isolation, and of course be influenced themselves by individual differences
across children. Additionally, the transition from babbling to meaningful speech
is an area that has just begun to attract research attention. Once a credible
account of this developmental period has been obtained for typical development,
a description of this period should be investigated for Down syndrome children.
Beyond the first year or so of life, a number of studies of language develop-
ment in Down syndrome children have attempted to describe a distinct overall
pattern of development related to Down syndrome (e.g., Greenwald & Leonard,
1979; Miller, 1988; L. Smith & von Tetzchner, 1986). Down syndrome children
appear to have a specific language deficit because they lag behind typically
developing children on a number of language measures when matched with these
children on measures of nonverbal cognition. Relationships among chronological
age, mental age, semantic development (vocabulary size), and syntactic develop-
ment (measured by mean length of utterance in morphemes) are being investigat-
ed longitudinally in Down syndrome children through the first 4 years (studies of
Miller and colleagues). These studies are providing information about the course
of early language development in Down syndrome children, and other investiga-
tors are studying older Down syndrome children (e.g., Fowler, 1988).
In addition to studies of language development patterns from infancy to 4
years, a third major area of inquiry regarding Down syndrome has focused on
mother-child interactions (e.g., Berger & Cunningham, 1983; Cardoso-Martins
et al., 1985). These studies have suggested that mothers of Down syndrome
children are more directive and less prone to use child-appropriate labels in
interactive situations with their children than are mothers of typically developing
children,
Reasons for interactive differences between Down syndrome and typically

developing child-caretaker dyads are manifold. Cardoso et al. (1985) reported
that the Down syndrome children in their study seemed more “passive” than the
typically developing controls. Perhaps mothers sense this passivity and attempt
to remedy it by aggressively stimulating their children. Greenwald and Leonard
(1979) and L. Smith and von Teuchner (1986) both indicated a generally lesser
amount of overall vocalizing in their Down syndrome subjects. Lind et al. (1970)
also noted that Down syndrome infants did not cry as often as typically develop-
ing infants. This general “quietness” could contribute to the perception of Down
syndrome as passive and also perhaps result in these children appearing less
communicative than typically developing children. Both passivity and quietness
on the part of their Down syndrome children could possibly motivate mothers to
stimulate their children to increase the overall communicative interchange. The
factors contributing to different interaction patterns between Down syndrome and
typically developing child-mother pairs should be studied further in an attempt
to understand the communicative environment of Down syndrome children.
Studies of perception and babbling in the first year of life, overall patterns of
language development across a variety of verbal and nonverbal cognitive assess-
ments, and mother-child interaction represent three main foci of research on
early language development of Down syndrome children. Other areas studied to
some degree have been vocal quality (e.g., Pentz, 1987) and cry (e.g., Lind et
a l . , 1970). The work on patterns of language development has provided the
greatest insights into early language in Down syndrome children, and this on-
going work promises to yield additional important information. Other areas,
however, have been largely neglected and are not the focus of intensive inquiry at
this time. It has been obvious for some time that persons with Down syndrome
experience considerable difficulties with language (see Gibson, 1978), and early
language intervention can be of benefit for other handicapped groups, for exam-
ple, the deaf (see Oller, Eilers, Vergara, & Lavoie, 1986). Therefore, description
of the early language difficulties of Down syndrome children could result in the
development of effective strategies for augmenting the language development of
these children that may not be possible later in life. This reason, aside from the
basic theoretical interest of the study of early language in disordered populations,
is sufficient for the devotion of a substantially greater research effort in this
underinvestigated area.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Preparation of this work was supported by NIH/NIDCD Grant l-ROl-DC00484 (D. K . Oller,
Principal Investigator). The authors are grateful for helpful commentary on earlier versions of the
article from Dr. Barry Lester, Dr. Jon Miller, and Michele L. Steffens.
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Perspectives on Early Language from

Typical Development and Down Syndrome

DEPARTMENTS OF PSYCHOLOGY, PEDIATRICS, A N D OTOLARYNGOLOGY

‘Present address: Department of Audiology and Speech Sciences, h d u e University, West

INTERNATIONALREVIEW OF RESEARCH m 55 Copyright 0 1991 by Academic h s s . Inc.

is that few of the language-related disabilities that are specifically related to

syllable production, alternative sensory systems may be brought to bear on

€3. Innate Capacities for Speech

In addition to the speech- and species-specificity issues, progress has been

The process of linguistic specialization incorporates a broad variety of devel-

experience with nonnative contrasts results in decay of perceptual ability for

D. From Ear and Eye

month-olds) preferred to look at a face that was performing articulatory gestures

E. Converging Evidence from Music Perception

generally confined within an octave (acoustic frequency ratio of 2 : 1). Specific

Soraci, Barlean, Haenlein, and Baumeister (1986) suggested that retarded

Considerable progress has been made in recent years in the description of

A. Myths of Infant Vocal Development

features, and amplitude envelopes, but there is no theoretically convincing man-

B. Maturation and Experience

1. DEVELOPMENT OF MATURE SYLLABLE PRODUCTION

different words produced in free speech samples, phonetic inventory, percentage

In addition to the language specificity of delays in Down syndrome children in

An alternative to analyzing pain cries might be to monitor Down syndrome

IV. RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN PERCEPTION

expressive language ability of the Down syndrome children at 3 years, which

to ara) and the presentation of a visual reinforcer. In other words, it is difficult to

Reasons for interactive differences between Down syndrome and typically

A s h , R. N., & Pisoni, D. B. (1980). Some developmental processes in speech perception. In G. H.

children with Down syndrome. Paper presented at the American Speech-Language-Hearing

Werker, J. F. (1989). Becoming a native listener. American Scienrisr, 77, 54-59.

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