Gender attribution and gender agreement in French Williams syndrome.
Williams syndrome can mask grammar deficits behind fluent speech—check gender agreement and other morphosyntax explicitly.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Boloh et al. (2009) looked at how French-speaking people with Williams syndrome handle gender in words.
They tested two skills: picking the right gender label and making adjectives match that gender in full sentences.
The team ran a small case-series study and compared results to same-age peers.
What they found
Participants knew the basic rule: use masculine when unsure. They scored equal to controls on this.
But when they had to make adjectives agree, they kept making errors.
Most important, the errors stayed the same no matter how old the participant was.
How this fits with other research
Lallier et al. (2014) later tested the same French-speaking adults with Williams syndrome on grammar judgments. Those adults still performed like seven-year-olds, backing the idea that morphosyntax plateaus.
Lacroix et al. (2010) found the group also misunderstands idioms, showing the problem is wider than just gender.
Together the papers map a clear pattern: surface vocabulary may sound good, yet grammar and pragmatics stay delayed and do not catch up with age.
Why it matters
If you assess a client with Williams syndrome, do not trust fluent speech as a sign of full language mastery. Probe gender agreement, idiom comprehension, and grammar judgments separately. Set goals for each domain, and do not assume older age will fix the gaps.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Previous studies on grammatical gender in French individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) have led to conflicting findings and interpretations regarding keys abilities--gender attribution and gender agreement. New production data from a larger WS sample (N=24) showed that gender attribution scores in WS participants exactly mirrored those of controls: all groups overwhelmingly relied on the masculine as the default gender. WS participants' agreement scores were far lower than those of CA-controls though not significantly below those of MA-controls. They also did not improve with age, which might suggest a permanent disability in this area.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2009 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2009.07.019