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.