English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

The present paper investigates the syntactic abilities of a group of individuals with Williams Syndrome to explore the debates surrounding the dissociation between language and cognition as well as possible dissociations within the language module in this population. Experimental linguistic measures that assess interpretation of passives, pronouns and reflexives as well as elicitation and comprehension of whquestions were employed. Overall results for the WS group reveal little evidence of the reported spared linguistic abilities in this population thus challenging the idea of a relatively intact language system in WS. Background assumptions and aims Neuro-developmental disorders like Williams Syndrome (WS) have been shown to present with a non-linear relationship between cognitive and linguistic abilities, showing better performance in language relative to cognition (Bellugi, Wang & Jernigan 1994, Clahsen & Almazan 1998). This has been used as evidence for a dissociation between language and cognition. WS has also been used to support the existence of submodular dissociations within the language faculty. It has been reported that individuals with WS perform better on grammatical tasks (passives, negation, interpretation of reflexives and pronouns, conditionals, formation of regular past tense and plurals) compared with tasks involving lexical processing (irregular past tense and plurals) (Bellugi et al. 1994, Clahsen & Almazan 1998, 2001). However, the claims about both kinds of modularity evidenced in WS have not gone unchallenged. Whilst many researchers would agree that the linguistic abilities of individuals with WS are in advance of their cognitive skills (Mervis et al. 2004, among others), the claim of relatively intact linguistic processing has been contested by researchers that present evidence for impaired morphosyntactic abilities along with other linguistic and nonlinguistic abilities (Karmiloff-Smith et al. 1997, among others). Also, there is currently a heated debate on whether any intra-linguistic dissociations exist in WS (Thomas et al. 2001). In an attempt to further explore the debates surrounding WS, Joffe and Varlokosta (under review) report preliminary new results (from a larger onV. Joffe and S. Varlokosta 158 going study) on the verbal and non-verbal abilities of a group of nine WS individuals, aged 8.8 to 23.5 years, using a range of standardised and nonstandardised measures. These preliminary results reveal little evidence of the reported spared linguistic abilities in WS as well little support for intra-linguistic dissociations. Any superior performance in rule-governed operations found in the WS cohort, was evident in the two control groups, Down Syndrome (DS) and Typically Developing (TD). In the present paper we extend the report of Joffe & Varlokosta (under review) by providing preliminary results from a series of experimental measures that aimed to assess complex computational operations (such as movement) in the same group of WS individuals.

Syntactic abilities in Williams Syndrome: How intact is ‘intact’?