Phonological abilities are abilities that include phonological memory and phonological awareness. Phonological memory is a system which codes and temporarily storages phonological informations. It is also named as phonological loop. It is assessed with digit span task and nonword repetition task. Phonological awareness refers to the sensitivity for the sound structure of oral language. It involves the term of phoneme awareness, which represents the ability of manipulating phonemes in words. Phonological awareness is assessed with different tasks, such as detection and production of rhyme, syllable segmentation and blending, phoneme segmentation and blending. Down syndrome affects 1 in 1000 to 1 in 1100 newborn children worldwide. It is most commonly caused by trisomy 21. Characteristics of population with Down syndrome include intellectual disabilities, significant incidence of hearing loss, and differences in speech characteristics, voice quality, vocabulary knowledge, morphosyntax, reading and writing, compared with typically developing people. Regarding pragmatic skills, children with Down syndrome show both similarities and differences in comparison with typically developing children. The aim of this review is to find out do people with Down syndrome differ in phonological memory and phonological awareness abilities from people of typical cognitive development. The data from scientific studies were analyzed. It is affirmed that, regarding digit span task, performance of individuals with Down syndrome was significantly lower compared with typically developing individuals in majority of studies in which these two groups were matched on mental age. Individuals with Down syndrome also had significantly lower performance in nonword repetition, in comparison with typically developing individuals. Moreover, in the majority of phonological awareness tasks administered on groups of people with Down syndrome and typically developing people matched on level of reading, participants with Down syndrome had significantly lower performance. Besides, in some studies difficulties in rhyme detection in participants with Down syndrome are observed. Finally, results of reviewed studies can be used as guidelines in fostering the development of capabilities of people with Down syndrome, but it is also necessary to take into account their individual characteristics.