A Representational Approach to Executive Function Impairments in Young Adults with Down Syndrome

ABSTRACT

Based on a representational perspective, this paper examines executive functioning in Down syndrome. Sixteen young adults with Down syndrome, 16 mental age- and 16 age-matched controls were compared on script sequencing and sorting tasks. Participants were asked to reestablish the sequential structure of script actions given with or without irrelevant actions. Impairments in script information processing were observed only in young adults with Down syndrome, who performed more slowly than controls, making mistakes in ordering actions, but rejecting aberrant elements. These data are consistent with the view that Down syndrome impairs the syntactic but not semantic dimension of script representation.

Disclosure of interest

The authors declare that they have no competing interest. We thank the reviewers of our paper for their constructive comments.

Notes

1. Indeed, the difficulty in ruling out intrusions in script task shows that the individual has difficulty in challenging aberrant or inappropriate actions (which are submitted/suggested to him) for the success of the task. This difficulty also refers to the vulnerability to erroneous suggestions observed in young and not so young people in recall situations of events (observed or experienced), where inhibition is a good predictor of performance and the observed variance (e.g. Corson & Verrier, 2013; Karpinsky & Scullin, 2009).