Prosody in narratives: An exploratory study with children with sex chromosomes trisomies

Although language delays are common in children with sex chromosome trisomies [SCT], no studies have analysed their prosodic abilities. Considering the importance of prosody in communication, this exploratory study aims to analyse the prosodic features of the narratives of 4-year-old children with SCT.

Participants included 22 children with SCT and 22 typically developing [TD] children. The Narrative Competence Task was administered to elicit the child's narrative. Each utterance was prosodically analysed considering pitch and timing variables.

Considering pitch, the only difference was the number of movements since the utterances of children with SCT were characterised by a lower speech modulation. However, considering the timing variables, children with SCT produced a faster speech rate and a shorter final syllable duration than TD children.

Since both speech modulation and duration measures have important syntactic and pragmatic functions, further investigations should deeply analyse the prosodic skills of children with SCT in interaction with syntax and pragmatics.