Idiom understanding in children and adolescents with Down syndrome: The role of text comprehension skills

In the current study, idiom understanding was analyzed in relation to the ability to process the linguistic context in which the idiom is embedded with the hypothesis that there is a strong relationship between text and idiom comprehension. This hypothesis was derived from the global elaboration model. Nonfamiliar idioms, both transparent and opaque, were presented in the context of a story to 20 participants with Down syndrome aged between 9 years, 9 months (9;9) and 18;1 and to 20 first-grade typically developing children aged between 6;3 and 7;3 who had the same level of text comprehension. Results show that for both groups differences in idiom understanding can be accounted for by differences in text comprehension: the same relationship holds between idiom and text comprehension in Down syndrome and in typical development and is not influenced by idiom type (semantic analyzability) or by sentence comprehension. The results provide support to the global elaboration model and are discussed in light of it.