Social reasoning skills in adults with Down syndrome: the role of language, executive functions and socio-emotional behaviour.
Adults with Down syndrome can talk about social rules like young kids, but they miss obvious wrongs unless you make them stand out.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team tested the adults with Down syndrome. Average age was 29.
Each person matched a typically-developing child on one number: receptive vocabulary age.
They read short social stories. Some acts broke rules, some did not. Adults picked if each act was okay or wrong.
They also took quick tests of language, memory, and self-control.
What they found
Overall, the DS group scored almost the same as the kids.
Yet they missed more of the clearly rude or unsafe acts.
Stronger receptive language predicted better scores. Executive functions added little extra power.
How this fits with other research
Kaufman et al. (2010) looked at kids with ID. Those kids misread friendly or mean intentions when stories showed conflict. Hilton et al. (2010) now show the pattern flips in DS adults: they grasp rules but miss clear violations. Age and diagnosis explain the flip.
Busch et al. (2010) studied adults with ID plus ASD and epilepsy. That group scored far lower on social skills. The DS adults here did better, hinting that DS alone is less punishing than triple comorbidity.
Channon et al. (2011) found adults with Asperger’s over-focus on intent when blaming. DS adults under-detect inappropriate acts. Together the papers map two social-cognition detours: one sees too much mind, the other sees too few red flags.
Why it matters
When you write social stories for DS clients, flag the wrong act in bold pictures and plain words. Do not assume they will spot the violation. Track receptive language scores; they forecast who will benefit most from the lesson.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Although the prevalence of mental illness and behaviour problems is lower in adults with Down syndrome (DS) than in other populations with intellectual disabilities, they do present emotional and relational problems, as well as social integration difficulties. However, studies reporting on specific competences known to be central in developing appropriate social relationships (e.g. social reasoning, emotion processing, theory of mind) remain rare in the adult DS population and the mechanisms underlying these people's emotional and relational difficulties are unclear. METHOD: The present study investigated the ability to understand the appropriateness of others' social behaviour in 34 adults with DS, using the Social Resolution Task (SRT). Their results were compared with those of 34 typically developing (TD) children matched for gender and receptive vocabulary. The relationships among the SRT experimental task, cognitive competences (receptive and productive vocabulary, non-verbal reasoning, inhibition, selective attention) and a caregiver-rated measure of socio-emotional behaviour were examined in the DS group. RESULTS: The DS participants' global SRT scores did not differ from those of the controls. However, analyses of the SRT subscores revealed that the DS group identified significantly fewer inappropriate situations than the control group. Nevertheless, when they correctly identified the behaviour as inappropriate, they were as well as the controls to explain the rules underlying their responses. Regression analyses showed that receptive vocabulary and selective attention and a specific dimension of the socio-emotional profile (social relating skills) constituted the best predictors of the DS adults' performance on the SRT. CONCLUSIONS: The main findings show that the DS participants demonstrate relatively good social reasoning skills in comparison with TD children matched for verbal age. However, the two groups present distinctions in their response patterns, and the influence of cognitive variables on success on the SRT also appears different. While selective attention skills are found to be significant predictors for both groups, the influence of receptive vocabulary level is much stronger in the DS group. The implications of particular cognitive and socio-emotional factors for success on the SRT in this group are considered in more detail.
Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR, 2010 · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2788.2010.01299.x