Verbal peaks and visual valleys in theory of mind ability in Williams syndrome.

The team gave two Theory-of-Mind tasks to people with Williams syndrome. One task used spoken stories. The other used pictures. They compared scores to typically developing peers.

The goal was to see if the social-cognitive profile changes when the input is verbal versus visual.

On the verbal task, the Williams group kept pace with controls. On the visual task, they fell behind.

The same person can show a strength or a weakness depending on how you ask.

Van Herwegen et al. (2015) extends this idea. They added eye-tracking and still saw poor ToM even when language and picture salience were low. Their data say the problem is not just looking in the wrong place.

Dahlgren et al. (2010) ran a similar verbal-vs-low-verbal design with kids who have severe speech impairments. Those kids also failed the word-heavy version but passed the lean version. The pattern echoes the Williams verbal peak.

Faso et al. (2016) show that visual-motor skills in Williams syndrome plateau at a five-year-old level. Together with the current paper, a broader visual-processing constraint emerges that touches both social and non-social tasks.

Pick the modality before you test. If you need a true read of social cognition in Williams syndrome, use spoken stories, not picture sequences. Save visual ToM tasks for other populations or pair them with extra support.