This study investigated the comprehension of plural morphosyntactic markers and its relationship with numerical comparison abilities in children with Down syndrome (DS). It evaluated 16 Spanish-speaking children with DS (mean verbal mental age = 3;6) and 16 typically developing children with similar receptive vocabulary (mean chronological age = 3;5). Children participated in two preferential looking tasks assessing their abilities to map singular and plural markers to their visual referents and to distinguish one object from more than one. Results showed that both groups of children correctly mapped plural markers to their referents but failed to map singular ones. Furthermore, results also indicated that both groups also looked at collections of more than one object with four objects but not at those with two. The eye movement patterns of children who looked at collections of more than one object suggest a counting-like strategy. These results indicate that comprehension of plural markers of children with DS is similar to that of their typically developing peers; however, it is not related to their numerical abilities.

中文翻译：

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唐氏综合症患儿的接受数形态句法

本研究调查了唐氏综合症 (DS) 儿童对复数形态句法标记的理解及其与数值比较能力的关系。它评估了 16 名具有 DS 的讲西班牙语的儿童（平均言语心理年龄 = 3;6）和 16 名具有相似接受词汇的典型发育儿童（平均实足年龄 = 3;5）。孩子们参加了两项优先寻找任务，评估他们将单数和复数标记映射到他们的视觉指示物以及区分一个物体和一个以上物体的能力。结果表明，两组儿童都正确地将复数标记映射到他们的所指对象，但未能映射单数标记。此外，结果还表明，两组还查看了包含四个对象的多个对象的集合，但没有查看具有两个对象的集合。看着不止一个物体的集合的儿童的眼球运动模式表明了一种类似计数的策略。这些结果表明，DS 儿童对多个标记的理解与正常发育的同龄人相似；但是，这与他们的数字能力无关。