McGill University, Quebec, Canada.
Am J Intellect Dev Disabil. 2013 May;118(3):193-200. doi: 10.1352/1944-7558-118.3.193.
The influences of verbal mental age (VMA) and performance mental age (PMA) on cognitive flexibility were examined among a group of participants with Down syndrome (DS), in order to disentangle the relative contributions of each. The impaired cognitive flexibility typically observed among individuals with DS in combination with uneven VMA and PMA development suggests an opportunity to further understand the developmental relationship between VMA, PMA, and cognitive flexibility. We examined the performance of 22 participants with DS on the Flexible Item Selection Task (FIST), used for measuring cognitive flexibility among preschoolers. Partial correlations revealed that only VMA was related to the FIST after controlling for PMA, highlighting the role of verbal abilities in the development of cognitive flexibility.
本研究旨在探讨言语心理年龄（VMA）和表现心理年龄（PMA）对唐氏综合征（Down syndrome，DS）患者认知灵活性的影响，以厘清两者各自的相对贡献。DS 患者的认知灵活性通常存在损伤，且 VMA 和 PMA 的发展也不均衡，这为进一步理解 VMA、PMA 和认知灵活性之间的发展关系提供了契机。我们对 22 名 DS 患者进行了灵活项目选择任务（Flexible Item Selection Task，FIST）的测试，该任务用于测量学龄前儿童的认知灵活性。偏相关分析结果表明，在控制 PMA 后，只有 VMA 与 FIST 相关，这突出了言语能力在认知灵活性发展中的作用。
