THE DEVELOPMENT OF LEARNING-DIFFICULTIES IN CHILDREN WITH DOWNS-SYNDROME

Authors
Citation
Jg. Wishart, THE DEVELOPMENT OF LEARNING-DIFFICULTIES IN CHILDREN WITH DOWNS-SYNDROME, JIDR. Journal of intellectual disability research, 37, 1993, pp. 389-403
Citations number
42
Categorie Soggetti
Education, Special",Rehabilitation,Neurosciences,"Genetics & Heredity",Psychiatry
ISSN journal
09642633
Volume
37
Year of publication
1993
Part
4
Pages
389 - 403
Database
ISI
SICI code
0964-2633(1993)37:<389:TDOLIC>2.0.ZU;2-O
Abstract
This paper examines individual developmental profiles drawn from a ser ies of longitudinal studies of cognitive development and problem-solvi ng in children with Down's syndrome (DS) from birth to 11 years of age . These highlight the difficulties in explaining DS development in ter ms of a slowed-down version of normal development and illustrate how, from a very early age, developmental progress in DS is undermined by t he children's failure to exercise and maintain existing skills and by their counter-productive approach to learning new skills. Developmenta l instability and inefficient learning were found to characterize perf ormance on contingency detection tasks, on tests of object concept dev elopment, and on standardized intelligence tests. Implications of the findings for assessment, educational practice and developmental theory are discussed.