Individuals with Down syndrome (DS) commonly possess unique neurocognitive and neurobehavioral profiles that emerge within specific developmental periods. These profiles are distinct relative to others with similar intellectual disability (ID) and reflect underlying neuroanatomic findings, providing support for a distinctive phenotypic profile. This review updates what is known about the cognitive and behavioral phenotypes associated with DS across the lifespan. In early childhood, mild deviations from neurotypically developing trajectories emerge. By school-age, delays become pronounced. Nonverbal skills remain on trajectory for mental age, whereas verbal deficits emerge and persist. Nonverbal learning and memory are strengths relative to verbal skills. Expressive language is delayed relative to comprehension. Aspects of language skills continue to develop throughout adolescence, although language skills remain compromised in adulthood. Deficits in attention/executive functions are present in childhood and become more pronounced with age. Characteristic features associated with DS (cheerful, social nature) are personality assets. Children are at a lower risk for psychopathology compared to other children with ID; families report lower levels of stress and a more positive outlook. In youth, externalizing behaviors may be problematic, whereas a shift toward internalizing behaviors emerges with maturity. Changes in emotional/behavioral functioning in adulthood are typically associated with neurodegeneration and individuals with DS are higher risk for dementia of the Alzheimer's type. Individuals with DS possess many unique strengths and weaknesses that should be appreciated as they develop across the lifespan. Awareness of this profile by professionals and caregivers can promote early detection and support cognitive and behavioral development.

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Down syndrome: Cognitive and behavioral functioning across the lifespan.

This study investigates the development of vocabulary and syntax comprehension skills cross-sectionally in 48 children and adolescents with Down syndrome (Trisomy 21), aged 5–20 years, in compariso...

Language skills of children and adolescents with Down syndrome: I. Comprehension.

Short-term memory for verbal and visuospatial information was examined in a group of children and teenagers with Down's syndrome. Performance on the verbal task was impaired relative to matched control groups, but there were no group differences on the visuospatial task. Relatedly, the Down's syndrome group showed inferior short-term memory for verbal as opposed to visuospatial information, whereas controls showed the opposite pattern. These findings did not appear to result from a general superiority of nonverbal abilities in the Down's syndrome group, or from hearing difficulties that might have impacted on the verbal short-term memory task, in which material was presented auditorily. The results are consistent with the suggestion that Down's syndrome is associated with a selective impairment of the phonological loop component of Baddeley and Hitch's (1974) working memory model.

Short-term Memory for Verbal and Visuospatial Information in Down's Syndrome.

Nonretarded (NR) individuals typically show better short-term memory for brief sequences of auditory than visual information (the modality effect). The present study attempted to determine whether the failure of Down's syndrome (DS) individuals to show the modality effect is due to the verbal-expressive demands of oral responding in memory tasks. DS, NR and MR (non-DS mentally retarded) subjects listened to or looked at increasingly long sequences of digits and attempted to recall them either orally or manually (through placement of items). Analyses suggested the following: (1) manual responding failed to enhance auditory recall in either DS or any other subjects; and (2) difficulty in recalling auditory stimuli was greater for DS mentally retarded subjects. An additional assessment of DS, MR and NR subjects on a standardized auditory short-term memory test requiring a nonverbal pointing response replicated the above findings.

Short-term memory difficulties and Down's syndrome

The present study was designed to investigate verbal and spatial short-term memory abilities in persons with Down's syndrome (DS) and intellectual disability (ID) of different aetiology. For this purpose, we compared performances of DS (n = 15; mean mental age = 5.2 years; SD = 1.2 years; mean chronological age = 16.6 years; SD = 2.9 years) and ID subjects (n = 14; mean mental age = 5.8 years; SD = 2.1 years; mean chronological age = 16.4 years; SD = 2.5 years) with those of normally developed subjects matched for mental age (n = 24) on tasks of forward and backward immediate recall of verbal and spatial sequences. Our results are discussed in the light of the Working Memory model developed by Baddeley (1986, 1990). Altogether, our data documents a deficit of verbal and spatial backward spans in persons with DS. The deficit seems to be specific for this particular aetiology group, confirming the hypothesis that ID is not a uniform condition, characterized by an undifferentiated delay of the cognitive development, but rather that it is characterized by a deficit in a complex cognitive system in which some cognitive abilities can be disrupted more than others (Detterman 1987; Vicari et al. 1992).

Short-term memory in persons with intellectual disabilities and Down's syndrome.

The majority of researchers investigating the memory skills of retarded individuals have utilized heterogeneous samples of subjects whose sole criteria for grouping was either IQ or MA. The present experiment was designed to evaluate the short-term memory performance of subjects representing a specific type of retardation. Three groups of subjects (Down syndrome, CA control, and MA control) received a battery of tests designed to assess recall and recognition memory utilizing either auditory or visual input with verbal and nonverbal responses. Results indicated that the Down syndrome group possessed deficits in both storage and retrieval abilities, with storage of visually presented stimuli being particularly impaired.

Down syndrome and short-term memory impairment: a storage or retrieval deficit?

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Down syndrome and short-term memory impairment: a storage or retrieval deficit?