Neuropsychological profile of adults with Down syndrome and moderate intellectual disability.
Adults with Down syndrome show even cognitive skills—no big splits—so give balanced support with extra help for verbal tasks.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team tested the adults with Down syndrome. All had moderate intellectual disability.
They gave a full neuropsych battery. Tests covered memory, language, and problem-solving.
They also tested the adults without Down syndrome but with the same IQ level for comparison.
What they found
Adults with Down syndrome scored evenly across all test areas. No big gaps between talking and visual tasks.
They did worse on verbal tests than the matched adults without Down syndrome.
Past child studies had shown big splits in skills. This adult group did not show those splits.
How this fits with other research
Dembo et al. (2023) looked at babies with Down syndrome. They found three clear profiles by 18 months. Camino’s work shows these early gaps may fade by adulthood.
Eggleston et al. (2018) tracked older adults with ID. They linked health issues to higher death risk. Camino adds that cognitive profile stays flat, so health—not cognition—may drive later outcomes.
Bouck et al. (2016) showed adults with ID report lower quality of life. Camino’s flat profile hints that support needs are steady, not spiky, which can guide service planning.
Why it matters
Use the same support level for all skill areas. Do not expect big verbal-visual splits in adults with Down syndrome. Focus extra time on verbal tasks, since that is the weaker spot.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: The neuropsychological profile of individuals with Down syndrome (DS) has been described as being characterized by dissociations between verbal and visual abilities, as well as between verbal comprehension and production abilities (higher visual than verbal abilities and higher verbal comprehension than verbal production abilities). However, the studies that reached these conclusions based these conclusions mainly on inter-group differences in children but not on intra-group differences. AIMS: The study explores dissociations in adults with DS, taking inter-group and intra-group differences into account. METHOD AND PROCEDURES: The sample was composed of 40 adults with DS and 38 adults with moderate intellectual disability (ID) but without DS, matched for chronological age, sex, and intellectual level. OUTCOMES AND RESULTS: The participants with DS, unlike the other group, exhibited similar performance in their verbal and visual abilities, as well as in their verbal comprehension and production abilities (intra-group differences). In addition, they showed worse performance in verbal general measures and verbal comprehension abilities but similar performance in visual general measures and verbal production abilities (inter-group differences) compared with those without DS with similar intellectual levels on standardized measures. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: The observed intra-group differences highlight that a lack of dissociation between verbal and visual abilities, as well as between verbal comprehension and production abilities, seems to be a specific feature of adults with DS.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2020 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2020.103781