Preferences in attention to visual cues in Down syndrome and normal children

Thirty-four children were selected who had reached a criterion on a matching task. Seventeen Down's syndrome were matched on M.A. with seventeen normal children (M.A. 6.0 X 0.5); there were nine females and six males in each group. All subjects were tested on two matching tasks, one involving increasing density of pattern and the other of both increasing size and density of pattern. The tests were repeated with the introduction of a short-term memory variable. Results showed that both groups had a preferred dimension for size over pattern. When size and pattern were combined, the Down syndrome group were confused by the two dimensions, showing preference for one or the other. The performance of the Down syndrome group was significantly weaker than the normal group, who were able to accommodate the imposition of patterns on size. In contrast to the Down syndrome group, attention to two dimensions helped to improve performance in the weaker dimension.