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.