The effect of television exposure on complex syntax use in children with Down syndrome

Abstract

Television, as a medium for language learning, has been only minimally researched. This study, using a multiple-probe design, investigated whether television shows that include high density of complex syntax would improve the accuracy of children with Down syndrome’s use of complex syntax or grammatical structures. Participants viewed selected episodes of Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood that include high incidences of embedded clauses five days each week according to that participant’s own morphosyntax use deficits. The study found that increased exposure to a television show over a span of eight weeks with high variability and high density of infinitive clauses increased the use of infinitive clauses in three children with Down syndrome. This exposure did not increase use of relative clauses, as observed through one child that did not have Down syndrome, but his use of grammatically correct sentences with greater than one clause stabilized over time. Additionally, increased exposure to the show did not have an impact on mean length of utterance for children with particularly low expressive language production.