The aim of this study was to assess wayfinding abilities in Down syndrome (DS). The ability to learn routes though a virtual environment (VE) and to make a novel shortcut between two locations was assessed in individuals with DS (N=10) and control participants individually matched on mental age (MA) or chronological age (CA). The results showed that most of the participants with DS was able to learn routes through VE, even though they needed more trials than the CA controls to reach the learning criterion. However, they did not have flexible wayfinding behaviour since they were not able to find a shortcut between two known locations (unlike the CA controls). The results suggested that most individuals with DS could acquire knowledge about specific routes without being able to integrate that knowledge into a configurational understanding.

The ability to learn routes though a virtual environment (VE) and to make novel shortcut between two locations were assessed in eighteen adults with intellecual disability and eighteen adults without intellectual disability matched on chronological age. Participants explored two routes (AB and AC) until they reached the learning criterion. Then, they were placed in B and were asked to find the shortest way to C (BC, five trials). Participants in both groups could learn the routes, but most of the participants with intellectual disability could not find the shortest route between B and C. However, the results also revealed important differences in the individuals with intellectual disability, with some participants having more efficient wayfinding behaviour than others. Individuals with intellectual disability may differ in the kind of spatial knowledge they extract from the environment and/or in the strategy they used to learn the routes.

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Cette étude examine l’apprentissage d’un nouvel environnement par des adultes avec et sans déficience intellectuelle (DI) de même âge chronologique. Suite à l’exploration active d’un environnement virtuel simulant un milieu urbain, nous avons évalué la mémorisation des points de repère, l’apprentissage de routes et la capacité à inférer des trajets nouveaux ou des raccourcis non appris auparavant. Les résultats indiquent que les participants de chaque groupe reconnaissent les points de repère et apprennent les routes à travers cet environnement. Cependant, les participants présentant une déficience intellectuelle infèrent peu de chemins nouveaux. Ainsi, la familiarité avec un environnement favorise l’acquisition des connaissances spatiales chez les deux groupes de participants qui se distinguent en revanche par l’accès aux représentations spatiales complexes.This study examines learning a new environment by adults with and without intellectual disabilities (ID) of the same chronological age. Following the active exploration of a virtual environment simulating an urban environment, we evaluated the memory benchmarks, learning routes and the ability to infer new routes not previously learned or shortcuts. The results indicate that the participants in each group recognize landmarks and learn the routes through this environment. However, participants with intellectual disabilities infer some new paths. Thus, familiarity with an environment promotes the acquisition of space knowledge for the two groups of participants who are striking for access to complex spatial representations

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The ability to describe routes was assessed in participants with intellectual disability (ID) and participants without ID matched on chronological age (CA) or on mental age (MA). In two experiments, participants learned a route through a virtual environment until they reached a learning criterion. They were then asked to externalize their spatial knowledge in a verbal description task, a landmark recognition task, or a map completion task. Results revealed that participants with ID mainly described the route as a succession of actions (“turn left”), and participants in the CA group prescribed actions referring to a landmark (“turn left at the swing”). Yet, results from the other tasks showed that people with ID had good landmark knowledge of the environment.

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