The role of sensory modality for the reproduction of shape by the severely retarded

Abstract

Down's syndrome and non-Down's syndrome subjects, matched for mental and chronological age, were compared on a drawing task. The stimulus shape had to be remembered and reproduced after either multimodal visual-kinaesthetic stimulation or unimodal visual or kinaesthetic input only. Drawing took place either with or without visual guidance of the drawing hand. Drawing skill was assessed according to the dimensions of shape, size and orientation as well as movement control.It was found that in general the presence of visual input information was more helpful for those without than for those with Down's syndrome in shape approximation. In contrast, Down's syndrome subjects tended to make better use of kinaesthetically derived information, especially in regard to orientation and movement control. 0261-510X/83/040317-11 S02.00/0 0 1983 The British Psychological Society Development. London: Academic Press.

Searching for a Life‐Span Psychobiology of Down Syndrome: Advancing Educational and Behavioural Management Strategies

“…This behavioural sequence is proported to be a product of depressed arousal system function. Gunn and Berry apply Anwar's (1981Anwar's ( ,1983 research to educational management by restricting the attention of the child with DS to a single feedback system, beginning with the proprioceptive, vestibular and kinesthetic input-output loops. Harris, Gibson and Rowland (1987) and Harris and Gibson (1988), in two experiments on comparative visual and proprioceptive information processing for DS versus other MR subjects, add that while there are especially strong interference effects in the cross-modality task for the subjects with DS, these decrease as proprioceptive task difficulty increases.…”