Neurobiological Models of Visuospatial Cognition in Children With Williams Syndrome: Measures of Dorsal-Stream and Frontal Function

The Davida Teller Award Lecture, 2016

“…We used two further tests of executive function, the “Detour Box” (after Hughes & Russell, 1993) and the “Day-Night verbal opposites test” (devised by Gerstadt, Hong, & Diamond, 1994), finding once again that WS children had great difficulty inhibiting a prepotent spatial response. However, in line with their relatively preserved verbal abilities, they showed better ability to overcome the prepotent verbal response in the Day-Night task (Atkinson et al, 2003). Thus the WS deficit here seems to affect specifically the inhibition of spatial responses, presumably reflecting a frontal executive mechanism modulating dorsal-stream visuo-spatial mechanisms (networks [a] and [b] in Figure 4).…”

“…We found delays and deficits in the ability to shift fixation, especially in the competition condition (Atkinson & Braddick, 2012a) in many term-born infants with perinatal brain injury (focal lesions or hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy; Hood & Atkinson, 1990; Mercuri et al, 1996; Mercuri, Atkinson, Braddick, Anker, Cowan et al, 1997), nearly all infants born very preterm, below 33 weeks gestational age (even many with normal or mild structural brain anomalies on neonatal MRI; Atkinson & Braddick, 2007; Atkinson et al, 2008), and many young children with WS (age between 1 and 7 years; Atkinson, Braddick, Anker, Curran, & Andrew, 2003). In addition to the effects of cortical damage, there appear to be areas within the basal ganglia which play a significant role in development of these early attention systems (Mercuri, Atkinson, Braddick, Anker, Nokes et al, 1997).…”

“…Typically developing children over the age of 4 years can rapidly point and counterpoint, without making any errors. WS children between the ages of 4 years and 15 years could point to the target rapidly when it appeared, but in the counterpointing condition their responses were slowed, and they frequently pointed initially to the target rather than the other side of the screen (Atkinson et al, 2003). We used two further tests of executive function, the “Detour Box” (after Hughes & Russell, 1993) and the “Day-Night verbal opposites test” (devised by Gerstadt, Hong, & Diamond, 1994), finding once again that WS children had great difficulty inhibiting a prepotent spatial response.…”

Learning from facial expressions in individuals with Williams syndrome

“…In order to control for differences between individuals with WS and TD persons that might arise because of the specific cognitive deficits, such as in spatial abilities or response inhibition, that have been observed among individuals with WS (Atkinson et al . ; Porter et al . ; Menghini et al .…”

“…Further, the participants with WS were expected to learn less effectively in the switch condition as compared to TD children of similar levels of development because of impairments in some executive functions (Atkinson et al . ; Porter et al . ; Menghini et al .…”