The Use of Gestures in One-Word Level Children with Down Syndrome

Kim, Sun-Hai; Ko, Do-Heung

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Commun Sci Disord. 2002;7(3): 95-106.

Sun-Hai Kim^` , and Do-Heung Ko^`

김선해(Sun-Hai Kim)| 고도흥(Do-Heung Ko)

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the use of gestures in children with Down Syndrome using CSBS by Wetherby & Prizant (1993). Ten children with Down Syndrome participated in this study as an experimental group, and ten children with normal development, as a control group. Frequency, rate, and type of gestures used were coded. The data were analyzed by descriptive statistics and a t-test in SPSS (version 10). The results of the present study can be summarized as follows: (1) Normal children used 2.0 gestures per minute and children with Down Syndrome used 3.5 gestures per minute. Thus, children with Down Syndrome used a high frequency in average number of gestures than children with normal development. There were significant differences between the groups in the total number of gestures (p< .05). (2) In the rate of gesturing, children with normal development made the most use of conventional gestures(90.7%). On the other hand, children with Down Syndrome used a much lower rate of conventional gestures(64.2%). It revealed that children with Down Syndrome used various high-level and richer-repertoire gestures than the control group. This result is consistent with previous studies. It was shown that symbolic gestures and combined gestures and joking were used only by children with Down Syndrome. In conclusion, predominant use of gestures by the children with Down Syndrome explains that these children have difficulty in language production. However, this study does not show a relation between gestures and language.