Abstract
BackgroundIt is well known that prioritization of the processing of threatening stimuli generally induces deleterious effects on task performance. However, a study recently reported that emotion (possibly fear) evoked by viewing images of snakes exerts a facilitating effect upon making judgments of the images’ color in neurotypical adults and schoolchildren. Here, the author has attempted to confirm the relevance of this notion in children with and without intellectual disability.MethodsThe author here compared the reaction time required to name the colors of snake and flower images between children with Down syndrome (DS) and mental age matched, typically‐developing (TD) children.ResultsSnake images were responded to faster than flower images in both the groups, while the children with DS tended to respond more slowly overall.ConclusionsAs in TD children, negative emotion can have a motivating effect on cognitive processing in children with DS. Some implications of the findings are pointed out with respect to the lower‐level task persistence as a characteristic motivational orientation in children with DS.
Highlights
It is well known that prioritization of the processing of threatening stimuli induces deleterious effects on the performance of tasks concerning the stimuli (Cohen, Dunbar, & McClelland, 1990; Ishai, Pessoa, Bikle, & Ungerleider, 2004; MacLeod, 2001; Öhman, Lundqvist, & Esteves, 2001)
The results presented here indicate that an emotional-cognitive association that appears likely to be crucial for the survival of humans is preserved even in humans who are intellectually disabled
For the youths with Down syndrome (DS), the present results showed overall slower reaction time (RT) than those of the TD children across all of the materials
Summary
It is well known that prioritization of the processing of threatening stimuli induces deleterious effects on the performance of tasks concerning the stimuli (Cohen, Dunbar, & McClelland, 1990; Ishai, Pessoa, Bikle, & Ungerleider, 2004; MacLeod, 2001; Öhman, Lundqvist, & Esteves, 2001). The author reports that this effect was confirmed as well in a population of children with intellectual disability due to a known genetic etiology, Down syndrome (DS). If fear evoked by viewing snakes facilitates perception of the animals in individuals with DS, as it is known to do in neurotypical individuals (Shibasaki et al, 2014), naming the color of snakes’ images should be facilitated in individuals with DS as well Such facilitation would not be observed if the unresponsiveness of individuals with DS to social danger signals extends to nonsocial danger signals, as represented by snakes. To address whether fear evoked by viewing snakes facilitates perception of the animals in individuals with DS, here the author compared the performance of the color-naming of snake and flower images between youths with DS and typically- developing (TD) children whose mental ages were matched to those of the youths with DS
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