Confrontation naming of familiar sounds and pictures by individuals with Down syndrome.

We investigated whether adolescents and young adults with Down syndrome experience difficulty in finding words to name familiar objects. In Experiment 1, IQ- and MA-matched individuals with Down syndrome and with mental retardation due to other causes orally identified familiar pictures and sounds. Results showed no evidence of syndrome-specific word-finding difficulty in accuracy or speed. Although both groups identified auditory stimuli less accurately and more slowly than visual stimuli, results of Experiments 2 and 3 confirmed that young children without mental retardation and college students showed the same pattern. Although previous researchers have shown expressive speech deficits among people with Down syndrome, these results suggest that adolescents and young adults with Down syndrome show no syndrome-specific difficulty in finding words to label familiar nonverbal sounds or pictures.