A survey of the visual and developmental-perceptual abilities of the Down's syndrome child

This pilot project was designed to survey the visual and developmental-perceptual abilities and capabilities of the Down's syndrome child. Considering the frequency of Down's syndrome in the general population, there has been a paucity of work done in this area. Each child was given a complete visual evaluation using standard pediatric techniques and careful objective observations of performance. Subjective techniques were used whenever possible, however, subjective testing could not be used on many of the subjects due to problems concerning their overall comprehension of the task and their ability to converse, as many infants were included in this study. All subjects were also given a developmental-visual examination which is composed of tests with readily available normative data, so that subjects could be compared to each other and to normal children.