Escuela de Psicología, Universidad de los Andes, Santiago, Chile.
Doctorado en Artes, Facultad de Artes, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
J Intellect Disabil Res. 2018 Sep;62(9):759-774. doi: 10.1111/jir.12516. Epub 2018 Jul 8.
Several studies show that socio-economic status (SES) is related to the developmental trajectories of children with typical development (TD). However, few studies have analysed this relationship regarding children with neurodevelopmental disorders such as Down syndrome (DS). In this paper, we analyse the impact of SES in the neurodevelopmental trajectories of children with DS in comparison with children with TD.
Cognitive, language, motor and socio-emotional development were assessed in 31 children with DS between the ages of 15 and 80 months from high to low SES backgrounds. Data from this group were compared with data from a sample of 72 children with TD randomly selected from the Longitudinal Survey of Early Childhood. We analyse and compare these two groups using the developmental trajectories method RESULTS: The results show delayed onsets for the four abilities measured in children with DS compared with children with TD from high to low SES. In the comparison of the developmental trajectories, we found that the differences between the neurodevelopmental trajectories in DS and TD vary according to SES. High SES show differences only in language development, while low SES show significant differences in cognitive, language and socio-emotional development.
The results indicate that SES is a factor that could impact the developmental trajectories of children with DS. Although the differences between children with DS and with TD are similar at the beginning regardless of SES, the developmental trajectories are slower in children with DS of low SES than in children of high SES. We argue that the differences are related to the complex interaction of several biological and cultural factors associated with SES. Some specific hypotheses about nutrition, health care access, quality of education and parenting practices are presented, but more research in this area is needed to fully understand these results.
多项研究表明，社会经济地位（SES）与典型发育儿童（TD）的发展轨迹有关。然而，很少有研究分析神经发育障碍（如唐氏综合征（DS））儿童的这种关系。在本文中，我们分析 SES 对 DS 儿童神经发育轨迹的影响，并与 TD 儿童进行比较。
我们对 31 名年龄在 15 至 80 个月的 SES 背景从高到低的 DS 儿童进行了认知、语言、运动和社会情感发育评估。从该组获得的数据与从纵向幼儿研究中随机选择的 72 名 TD 儿童的数据进行了比较。我们使用发展轨迹方法分析并比较了这两组数据。
结果显示，与高 SES 背景下的 TD 儿童相比，DS 儿童的四项能力的出现时间都有所延迟。在神经发育轨迹的比较中，我们发现 DS 和 TD 之间的差异根据 SES 而变化。高 SES 仅在语言发育方面存在差异，而低 SES 在认知、语言和社会情感发育方面存在显著差异。
结果表明 SES 是影响 DS 儿童发展轨迹的一个因素。尽管 SES 对 DS 儿童和 TD 儿童的初始差异相似，但低 SES 儿童的发展轨迹比高 SES 儿童慢。我们认为，这些差异与 SES 相关的多种生物和文化因素的复杂相互作用有关。我们提出了一些关于营养、医疗保健获取、教育质量和育儿实践的具体假设，但需要在该领域进行更多研究，以充分理解这些结果。
