Parental speech to young Down's syndrome children: an intervention study.

Parents with Down's syndrome children who were at the one-two word stage of expressive language development were given a language objective to work towards with their child, but no instructions on how to attain this goal. The parents spontaneously altered their language strategies in their attempts. Some parents were more successful and differed in their strategies, using more target words in shorter "statement" utterances. Parents who used a questioning or imitating strategy were less successful. The less successful parents were then shown how to alter their language strategies more appropriately to produce a greater improvement in their child's use of the target words.