Inhibitory Abilities in Individuals with Down Syndrome: Investigation of Interference Suppression Using an Adapted Version of Navon Task

ABSTRACT

Only a few studies have investigated inhibitory sub-components in individuals with Down syndrome (DS). This study investigates interference suppression, through global-local processes, in 50 people with DS matched for mental age (MA) with 63 typically developing children (MA = 23.6 and 6.8 years respectively). We adapted and administered a non-verbal Navon-shape task with high-familiarity symbols. For both groups, results showed equal performance on global vs. local items in the congruent condition, whereas significantly better performance on global conditions when faced with incongruent items. A greater impairment in incongruent responses emerged for both groups and more so for individuals with DS.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Associazione Italiana Persone Down-Marca Trevigiana as part of doctoral research. We would like to sincerely thank each participant and their families for making this study possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Declarations of interest

The authors report no conflict of interest

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Funding

The author(s) reported that there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.