Abstract
Working memory (WM) skills of individuals with Down’s syndrome (DS) tend to be very poor compared to typically developing children of similar mental age. In particular, research has found that in individuals with DS visuo-spatial WM is better preserved than verbal WM. This study investigated whether it is possible to train short-term memory (STM) and WM abilities in individuals with DS. The cases of two teenage children are reported: EH, 17 years and 3 months, and AS, 15 years and 11 months. A school-based treatment targeting visuo-spatial WM was given to EH and AS for six weeks. Both prior to and after the treatment, they completed a set of assessments to measure WM abilities and their performance was compared with younger typically developing non-verbal mental age controls. The results showed that the trained participants improved their performance in some of the trained and non-trained WM tasks proposed, especially with regard to the tasks assessing visuo-spatial WM abilities. These findings are discussed on the basis of their theoretical, educational, and clinical implications.
Highlights
Down syndrome (DS) is a pervasive developmental disorder caused by abnormalities of chromosome 21
Considering the tasks assessing verbal working memory (WM) abilities, the results showed no impairments in any verbal WM measure compared to the typically developing (TD) group in the pre-test session
In Selective word recall and in the Verbal dual task there was a decrease of performance, but her score remained higher than the average score of the TD group both in the pre- and post-test sessions
Summary
Down syndrome (DS) is a pervasive developmental disorder caused by abnormalities of chromosome 21 It is one of the most common causes of intellectual disability (ID), affecting about 1 in 700/1000 live births (Steele, 1996; Sherman et al, 2007; Parker et al, 2010). WM plays a key role in everyday life (e.g., reading, writing, arithmetic, learning, languageprocessing, orientation, and imagination) for typically developing (TD) children as much as for individuals with cognitive disabilities. Given this link between WM performance and classroom and daily life functioning, it is of substantial interest to investigate the effectiveness of interventions designed to reduce WM and STM difficulties in order to provide effective evidence-based training programs for young people with DS. The enhancement of memory skills would be expected to promote skill development (e.g., Gathercole and Alloway, 2006) and independence of individuals with DS, minimizing the impact of the WM deficit on their lives
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