Children With Williams Syndrome: Language, Cognitive, and Behavioral Characteristics and Their Implications for Intervention

Williams syndrome (WS) is a rare genetic disorder characterized by heart disease, failure to thrive, hearing loss, intellectual or learning disability, speech and language delay, gregariousness, and non-social anxiety. The WS psycholinguistic profile is complex, including relative strengths in concrete vocabulary, phonological processing, and verbal short-term memory and relative weaknesses in relational/conceptual language, reading comprehension, and pragmatics. Many children evidence difficulties with finiteness marking and complex grammatical constructions. Speech-language intervention, support, and advocacy are crucial.