Goals of the Study
The primary goal of the current study is to examine the impact of task
difficulty and environmental context on the object retrieval skills of
young children with DS. Children were presented with three tasks
requiring retrieving a toy from a transparent box (task 1), an opaque
box (task 2), and a transparent box within an opaque box (task 3).
Specifically, task 1 was the baseline with no additional task and/or
contextual complexity, whereas task 2 had contextual complexity, and
task 3 had both task + contextual complexity. We hypothesized that
compared to the mental age-matched TD group, children with DS will have
similar success in the simple task of retrieving toy from a transparent
box (task 1), however, during task 2 and 3, children with DS will
perform poorly compared to TD controls as assessed using the success
rate, use of bimanual strategies, and/or completion time.