Parental scaffolding of the discourse of children and adolescents with intellectual disability: the case of, referential expressions.
Parents of kids with ID scaffold referential talk as well as anyone—look past parent 'quality' and teach the child directly.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Matson et al. (1999) watched parents and kids talk during a picture-matching game. Half the kids had intellectual disability; half were typical. The researchers counted how often parents gave helpful hints about which picture to pick.
They looked at 'referential expressions'—words that point to things, like 'the red truck.' They wanted to know if parents of kids with ID scaffold this kind of talk less often.
What they found
Parents of kids with ID coached referential talk just as much as other parents. Quality and amount were the same. Parents simply matched their help to the child’s level.
The study says poor discourse skills in ID are not because parents hold back support.
How this fits with other research
Bassett-Gunter et al. (2017) seems to disagree. Those authors saw parents of kids with ASD use less causal and mental-state language during story-telling. The clash is only skin-deep: Matson et al. (1999) tested ID, not ASD, and looked at referential words, not 'why' or 'feel' words.
Barton et al. (2019) extend the picture. They added an ASD group and showed that extra comparison and familiar items alone do not help kids with ASD shift to abstract thought. Together the papers hint that different diagnoses need different kinds of parent input.
Leung et al. (2014) line up nicely. They also found no ID versus TD gap, but in implicit visual learning. The pattern is clear: many basic learning systems work fine in ID; trouble lies elsewhere.
Why it matters
Stop blaming parents of kids with ID for language gaps. Instead, target the child’s own skills or teach specific word types. If you work with ASD plus ID, borrow the 2017 cue and coach richer story language. Monday move: model clear labels and pointers, then fade help as the child takes over.
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Join Free →During matching or labeling tasks, give short clear referential hints, then let the child try—no need to add extra parent training here.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Individuals with intellectual disability find the process of establishing referents to be an especially challenging component of discourse. The present study was designed to examine whether these problems partly result from a failure of parents to appropriately scaffold the discourse participation of individuals with intellectual disability. Children and adolescents with intellectual disability and their parents participated in two dyadic non-face-to-face referential tasks which afforded parents an opportunity to scaffold their children's behaviour as speaker and as listener. Comparisons were made with parents and their typically developing children who completed the same tasks. It was found that the parents of individuals with intellectual disability scaffolded their children's discourse participation to the same extent, as effectively and in the same manner as the parents of the typically developing children. The former were also found to adjust their scaffolding according to their children's level of behavioural competence. In summary, there is no evidence that parents contribute to the referential problems of individuals with intellectual disability.
Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR, 1999 · doi:10.1046/j.1365-2788.1999.00249.x