Route-learning strategies in typical and atypical development; eye tracking reveals atypical landmark selection in Williams syndrome.
People with Williams syndrome need you to show them which landmarks matter because they will not pick them out on their own.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Lim et al. (2016) watched how people with Williams syndrome look at landmarks while learning a new route. They used eye-tracking goggles to see exactly where each person looked. The team compared a small group with WS to typically developing peers walking the same virtual path.
What they found
The WS group looked less at helpful landmarks like street signs or building corners. They also failed to pick out the key spots where two paths meet. In short, they did not choose the same useful cues the control group used to remember the way.
How this fits with other research
Perryman et al. (2013) saw the same problem in people with intellectual disability. That earlier study found participants picked too many non-unique objects and missed text signs. Together, the two papers show poor landmark selection is common across ID and WS.
Schaaf et al. (2015) surveyed teachers and found most had no training on Williams syndrome. Their data help explain why staff may not notice the landmark problem K et al. caught on camera.
Fahmie et al. (2013) used eye-tracking with Fragile X and also found a negative result, but in emotion recognition, not navigation. The shared method links the studies even though the skills differ.
Why it matters
If you teach travel training to clients with WS, do not assume they will notice the right landmarks. Point, label, and prompt them to look at junction signs and building corners. Build these prompts into your task analysis. This small tweak can turn a failed community trip into a safe, independent walk.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Add a prompt step: physically point to the street sign at each corner and say the name aloud before asking the client to turn.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Successful navigation is crucial to everyday life. Individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) have impaired spatial abilities. This includes a deficit in spatial navigation abilities such as learning the route from A to B. To-date, to determine whether participants attend to landmarks when learning a route, landmark recall tasks have been employed after the route learning experience. Here, we combined virtual reality and eye tracking technologies, for the first time, to measure landmark use in typically developing (TD) children and participants with WS during route-learning. METHOD: Nineteen individuals with WS were asked to learn a route in a sparse environment (few landmarks) and in a rich environment (many landmarks) whilst their eye movements were recorded. Looking times towards landmarks were compared to TD children aged 6, 8 and 10 years. Changes in attention to landmarks during the learning process were also recorded. RESULTS: The WS group made fewer looks to landmarks overall, but all participants looked for longer at landmarks that were at junctions and along the paths of the maze than landmarks that were in the distance. Few differences were observed in route learning between the sparse and rich environments. In contrast to the TD groups, those in the WS group were as likely to look at non-unique landmarks as landmarks at junctions and on paths. DISCUSSION: The current results demonstrate that attention to landmarks during route learning reflects the types of landmarks remembered in memory tasks, that individuals with WS can learn a route if given sufficient exposure, but that this is accomplished within the context of an impaired ability to select appropriate landmarks.
Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR, 2016 · doi:10.1111/jir.12331