title: Visuo-spatial knowledge acquisition in individuals with Down syndrome: The role of descriptions and sketch maps.
abstract: Few studies on individuals with Down syndrome (DS) have explored how they learn space. The present study examines space learning from verbal descriptions in individuals with DS, and explores the role of external cues (such as a sketch map). Twenty-eight individuals with DS and 28 matched typically-developing (TD) children listened to route or survey descriptions with or without seeing a corresponding sketch map (Description+Sketch Map [D+SM] and Description alone [D], respectively). After hearing each description, they performed tasks that involved recognizing, arranging sequentially, and locating landmarks. The results showed that individuals with DS performed less well in recognizing landmarks and arranging them sequentially. The D+SM condition produced general benefits in both groups' accuracy, though the improvement in locating landmarks was greater in the TD than in the DS group. In both groups, the D+SM condition prompted a better performance than the D condition when participants arranged landmarks sequentially after hearing a description from a route perspective, but not from a survey perspective. Overall, our results show that individuals with DS benefited when a spatial description was associated with a corresponding sketch map, albeit to a lesser degree than TD children. The findings are discussed in the light of the literature on DS and on spatial cognition in the TD domain.
authors.affiliation: Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, Italy. Electronic address: chiara.meneghetti@unipd.it.
authors.forename: Chiara
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Meneghetti
authors.affiliation: Department of Developmental Psychology and Socialization, University of Padova, Padova, Italy.
authors.forename: Silvia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Lanfranchi
authors.affiliation: Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, Italy.
authors.forename: Barbara
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Carretti
authors.affiliation: Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, Italy.
authors.forename: Enrico
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Toffalini
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003071:Cognition; D003463:Cues; D004314:Down Syndrome / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D065853:Spatial Learning; D065854:Spatial Navigation
keywords: Down syndrome; Landmark location; Landmark sequence; Sketch map; Spatial descriptions