Gross motor skill acquisition in adolescents with Down syndrome

The purpose of this study was to assess whether verbal-motor performances deficits exhibited by individuals with Down syndrome limited their ability to acquire gross motor skills when given visual and verbal instruction together and then transferred to either a visual or verbal instructional mode to reproduce the movement. Nine individuals with Down syndrome (6 males, 3 females) performed 3 gross motor skills. Both visual and verbal instructional guidance was given to the participants over a 4-day period. Twenty-four hours later, the participants were video recorded as they produced the movements (used as baseline measures). On Day 6, they were randomly assigned into verbal and visual groups and required to reproduce the skills while the experimenter provided either visual demonstration or verbal instructions depending on the group. Based on skill performance scores, participants in the verbal-motor performance group demonstrated a lower level of proficiency and an increased number of performance errors when compared to participants in the visual-motor performance group. Moreover, while the visual group demonstrated an increase in performance levels compared to baseline measures, the opposite effect was seen for the verbal group.