Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, Padova, Italy.
J Intellect Disabil Res. 2010 Dec;54(12):1058-66. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2788.2010.01334.x. Epub 2010 Oct 4.
Recent studies have demonstrated that individuals with Down syndrome (DS) are poorer than controls in spatial-simultaneous tasks, but not in spatial-sequential tasks. To explain this finding, it has been suggested that the simultaneous visuo-spatial working memory deficit of individuals with DS could be due to the request for processing more than one item at a time. The present study examines the possibility of reducing the difficulties encountered by DS individuals on spatial-simultaneous tasks by proposing a task that uses structured material.
Two tasks were administered to 20 children and adolescents with DS, and 20 controls matched for verbal mental age. The tasks involved memorising and recalling filled-cell positions in a series of matrices in which an increasing number of cells (1-7) were filled. In the structured condition the filled cells were displayed to form a pattern, whereas in the random condition they were randomly arranged.
Results showed that individuals with DS are able to take advantage of structured material for raising their performance, but to a less extent than typically developing children.
最近的研究表明，唐氏综合征（DS）患者在空间同时任务中比对照组表现更差，但在空间顺序任务中则没有。为了解释这一发现，有人认为 DS 患者的同时视空间工作记忆缺陷可能是由于一次处理多个项目的要求。本研究通过提出使用结构化材料的任务，检验了降低 DS 个体在空间同时任务中遇到的困难的可能性。
对 20 名唐氏综合征儿童和青少年以及 20 名语言智力年龄匹配的对照组进行了两项任务。任务包括在一系列矩阵中记忆和回忆填充单元格的位置，其中填充的单元格数量逐渐增加（1-7）。在结构化条件下，填充的单元格显示为一个图案，而在随机条件下，它们是随机排列的。
结果表明，唐氏综合征患者能够利用结构化材料来提高他们的表现，但程度低于典型发育的儿童。
