Description of the motor development of 3-12 month old infants with Down syndrome: the influence of the postural body position.
Expect late but normal-order motor milestones in babies with Down syndrome and track them with AIMS.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Tudella et al. (2011) watched 3- to 12-month-old babies with Down syndrome move. They used the Alberta Infant Motor Scale (AIMS) every month. They wanted to see when these babies reached motor milestones.
The team scored each baby’s body position: lying, sitting, standing. They tracked antigravitational skills like lifting the head or pulling to stand.
What they found
Babies with Down syndrome followed the same motor order as typical babies, but every step came later. The biggest delays showed up in antigravitational postures.
For example, skills that fight gravity—like sitting without support—took much longer to appear.
How this fits with other research
Tsao et al. (2017) found the same delay-not-difference pattern in handwriting. Kids with Down syndrome wrote like younger typical kids, not in a quirky way. This supports the idea that Down syndrome means slower growth, not a new path.
Dargue et al. (2021) pooled 125 single-case ABA studies and saw medium gains in communication and behavior for people with Down syndrome. Their meta-analysis covers the same population but looks at what helps after the baby years.
Edgin et al. (2017) showed the Arizona Cognitive Test Battery gives reliable scores for youth with Down syndrome. Like Eloisa’s work, it proves we can track development with solid tools.
Why it matters
If you assess an infant with Down syndrome, expect motor delays but trust the sequence. Use AIMS monthly to spot progress and set goals that match developmental age, not birth age. Share this roadmap with parents so they know late does not mean never.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The purpose of the present study was to describe the rate of motor development in infants with Down syndrome in the age range of 3-12 months and identify the difficulties both in performance and acquiring motor skills in prone, supine, sitting and standing positions. Nineteen infants with Down syndrome and 25 healthy full term typical infants were assessed using the Alberta Infant Motor Scale (AIMS) monthly from 3 to 12 months of age. The infants with Down syndrome achieved significant later the level of motor performance of the typical infants. In the supine posture, the performance was significantly lesser for the Down syndrome infants in comparison to the typical infants from the 3rd to 6th month and in the 8th month. In the prone, sitting and standing postures this difference is found for all the months. In conclusion, the sequence of motor development of the Down syndrome is the same as the typical infants. However infants with Down syndrome need more time to acquire skills, mainly antigravitational ones, among them the standing position.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2011 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2011.01.046