Memory and representation in young children with Down syndrome: Exploring deferred imitation and object permanence

Abstract

Deferred imitation and object permanence (OP) were tested in 48 young children with Down syndrome (DS), ranging from 20 to 43 months of age. Deferred imitation and high-level OP (invisible displacements) have long been held to be synchronous developments during sensorymotor "Stage 6" (18-24 months of age in unimpaired children). The results of the current study demonstrate deferred imitation in young children with DS, showing they can learn novel behaviors from observation and retain multiple models in memory. This is the first demonstration of deferred imitation in young children with DS. The average OP level passed in this sample was A-not-B, a task passed at 8-12 months of age in normally developing infants. Analyses showed that individual children who failed high-level OP (invisible displacements) could still perform deferred imitation. This indicates that deferred imitation and OP invisible displacements are not synchronous developments in children with DS. This asynchrony is compatible with new data from unimpaired children suggesting that deferred imitation and high-level OP entail separate and distinctive kinds of memory and representation.This study addressed the relationship between imitation from memory (deferred imitation) and object permanence in young children with Down syndrome. Although object permanence has been investigated numerous times in this population (Cicchetti & MansWagener, 1987;Dunst, 1981Dunst, , 1988Dunst, , 1990Dunst & Rheingrover, 1983;Kahn, 1978;Mervis & Cardoso-Martins, 1984;Morss, 1983Morss, , 1984Pasnak & Pasnak, 1987;Sloper, Glenn, & Cunningham, 1986;Wishart, 1986Wishart, , 1987Wishart & Duffy, 1990), this is the first study designed to test deferred imitation in young children with Down syndrome.In classic developmental theory, there is thought to be a deep kinship between deferred imitation and a high level of object permanence ("Stage 6" invisible displacements). Both provide a measure of recall not simply recognition memory: To succeed, infants must generate actions on the basis of stored representations of perceptually absent realities. Both are thought to derive from a common source, the emergence of a representational intelligence (Piaget, 1952(Piaget, , 1954(Piaget, , 1962. It has long been held that deferred imitation and high-level object permanence (OP) emerge in tandem at about 18 to 24 months of age in unimpaired children. NIH Public Access Author ManuscriptDev Psychopathol. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2014 December 18. Published in final edited form as:Dev Psychopathol. 1995 ; 7(3): 393-407. doi:10.1017/S0954579400006593. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author ManuscriptRecent data and theory have shown that some developmental synchronies described by Piagetian theory do not obtain, but that others certainly do (e.g., Astington & Gopnik, 1991;Bates & Snyder, 1987;Curcio & Houlihan, 1987;Fischer & Bidell, 1991;Flavell, 1982;Gopnik & Meltzoff, 1986, 1992Hirschfeld & Gelman, 1994;Uzgiris, 1987). Although contemporary researc...

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