Department of Medical and Surgical Sciences, Magna Graecia University of Catanzaro, Catanzaro, Italy.
Department of Psychology, "Sapienza" University of Rome, Rome, Italy.
Dev Sci. 2018 Sep;21(5):e12642. doi: 10.1111/desc.12642. Epub 2017 Dec 26.
New skills may be learned by active experience (experiential learning or learning by doing) or by observation of others' experience (learning by observation). In general, learning by observation reduces the time and the attempts needed to learn complex actions and behaviors. The present research aimed to compare learning by observation and learning by doing in two clinical populations with different etiology of intellectual disability (ID), as individuals with Down syndrome (DS) and individuals with Williams syndrome (WS), with the hypothesis that specific profiles of learning may be found in each syndrome. To this end, we used a mixture of new and existing data to compare the performances of 24 individuals with DS, 24 individuals with WS and 24 typically developing children on computerized tasks of learning by observation or learning by doing. The main result was that the two groups with ID exhibited distinct patterns of learning by observation. Thus, individuals with DS were impaired in reproducing the previously observed visuo-motor sequence, while they were as efficient as TD children in the experiential learning task. On the other hand, individuals with WS benefited from the observational training while they were severely impaired in detecting the visuo-motor sequence in the experiential learning task (when presented first). The present findings reinforce the syndrome-specific hypothesis and the view of ID as a variety of conditions in which some cognitive functions are more disrupted than others because of the differences in genetic profile and brain morphology and functionality. These findings have important implications for clinicians, who should take into account the genetic etiology of ID in developing learning programs for treatment and education.
新技能可以通过积极的经验（体验式学习或实践学习）或观察他人的经验（观察学习）来学习。一般来说，观察学习可以减少学习复杂动作和行为所需的时间和尝试次数。本研究旨在比较两种具有不同智力障碍（ID）病因的临床人群（唐氏综合征（DS）和威廉姆斯综合征（WS））的观察学习和实践学习，假设在每种综合征中可能会发现特定的学习模式。为此，我们使用了新的和现有的混合数据来比较 24 名 DS 患者、24 名 WS 患者和 24 名正常发育儿童在观察学习或实践学习计算机任务上的表现。主要结果是，两组 ID 患者表现出不同的观察学习模式。因此，DS 患者在再现先前观察到的视动序列方面存在障碍，而他们在体验式学习任务中的表现与 TD 儿童一样高效。另一方面，WS 患者从观察训练中受益，但在体验式学习任务（首次呈现时）中严重难以检测到视动序列。这些发现支持了综合征特异性假说和 ID 是一种多种条件的观点，即由于遗传特征和大脑形态和功能的差异，一些认知功能比其他功能受到更大的破坏。这些发现对临床医生具有重要意义，他们应该考虑 ID 的遗传病因，为治疗和教育制定学习计划。
