Lexical Abilities in Williams Syndrome

Abstract

This study aims to illuminate the organisation of the mental lexicon in individuals with Williams Syndrome (WS). Previous research of WS lexical abilities has focused mainly on analysis on a quantitative level, but included observations of unusual performance that motivate a qualitative investigation. This study explored WS performance using data from 64 Dutch-speaking WS individuals for a picture vocabulary task, a naming task and a word-definition task. The findings from the research support Temple et al.’s (2002) findings regarding a lack of semantic precision in lexical comprehension and suggest this may extend to the productive domain as well. In addition, a specific weakness regarding adjective comprehension has been observed, as well as remarkable productive creativity when participants attempted to circumvent word-finding problems. Based on these findings, qualitative research could well be the next chapter of research into the fascinating language profile of these individuals.