Factors Impacting Object Retrieval Skills in Children
From the Ecological perspective, person-task-contexts interact with one another to influence performance (Gibson & Pick, 2000). Therefore, object retrieval skills could be impacted by the presence/severity of a health condition (person level ), the complexity and difficulty of the task (task level ), and the environmental set-up or setting (context level ). Specifically, task complexity during object retrieval tasks could result from the number of steps (Goubet et al., 2006), use of additional tools (Poulson et al., 1989; Bojczyk & Corbetta, 2004), or the need for bimanual coordination/dissociation to retrieve the toy (Diamond 1988; 1991). Goubet et al. (2006) indicated that older 18-month-old TD infants were more successful during tasks requiring greater number of steps to retrieve toys (e.g., pulling a mat followed by lifting a box and opening locked devices) compared to younger 9-month-old infants. Similarly, the environmental set-up such as the degree of transparency of the boxes involved in the task could impact infants’ performance (Bojczyk & Corbetta, 2004). Bojczyk & Corbetta (2004) provided repeated exposure to object retrieval tasks using semitransparent or opaque boxes to TD infants beginning at 6.5 months of age. These infants showed earlier learning (and success) in the task for infants exposed to a semitransparent box compared to an opaque box. In contrast to the TD literature, there is lack of studies examining the impact of task and/or context on the object retrieval skills of infants and children with DS. The research we present here aims to begin to fill this gap.