Even features that seem largely controlled by environmental factors for almost everyone are influenced by genes, and

can be very different given enough of a change in the genome. An obvious example for behavior analysts is learning, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2223161/?tool=pmcentrez he majority of these mothers reported being frightened or anxious after learning the diagnosis, and very few rated the overall experience as a positive one. Mothers reported that their physicians talked little about the positive aspects of DS and rarely provided enough up-to-date printed materials or telephone numbers of other parents with children with DS. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15629983 This study presents ameta-analyticreview of language and verbalshort-termmemoryskills in children with Down syndrome. The study examines the profile of strengths and weaknesses in children with Down syndrome compared to typically developing children matched for nonverbal mental age. The findings show that children with Down syndrome have broad language deficits (that are not restricted to measures of expressive language) and associated verbalshort-termmemory deficits. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0891422211001739 Individuals with DS were found to have greater difficulty with inferential comprehension questions than expected given their overall comprehension ability and the reading profile associated with DS was found to be similar to that of children known as poor comprehenders. It is recommended that oral language training programs, similar to those that have been shown to improve reading comprehension in poor comprehenders, be trialed with children who have DS. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21536407 Maternal behaviors and child mastery behaviors were examined in 25 children with Down syndrome and 43 typically developing children matched for mental age (24-36 months). During a shared problem-solving task, there were no group differences in maternal directiveness or support for autonomy, and mothers in the two groups used similar verbal strategies when helping their child. There were also no group differences in child mastery behaviors, measured as persistence with two optimally challenging tasks. However, the two groups differed in the relationships of maternal style with child persistence. Children with Down syndrome whose mothers were more supportive of their autonomy in the shared task displayed greater persistence when working independently on a challenging puzzle, while children of highly directive mothers displayed lower levels of persistence. For typically developing children, persistence was unrelated to maternal style, suggesting that mother behaviors may have different causes or consequences in the two groups. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19304452

Clustering same-color symbols facilitated the speed of locating the target for all participants, and facilitated search accuracy in the younger preschool children and participants with Down syndrome. These effects held when targets were foods, clothing, or activities. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18448605 Results suggest that some children with DS can improve their auditory verbal memory span with home-based rehearsal training, at least in limited ways. Children with good language and verbal working memory skills may be the best candidates for this type of training, even though they may show only small improvements. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18261023 Responsive Teaching is an early intervention curriculum designed to address the cognitive, language, and social emotional needs of young children with developmental problems. This innovative intervention model was derived from research conducted primarily with children with Down syndrome and their mothers. Results from these studies indicated that during the early childhood years, parents promote their children's development by engaging in highly responsive interactions throughout their daily routines. The effects of responsiveness are mediated by the impact it has on children's use of several pivotal developmental behaviours, such as social play, attention, initiation and persistence. Responsive Teaching helps parents learn to use Responsive Teaching strategies to promote the pivotal developmental behaviours that are relevant to their children's developmental needs. Research with 50 children with developmental problems and their parents indicated that Responsive Teaching was highly effective at addressing children's developmental and social emotional needs. The effects of this intervention were mediated by the impact that RT strategies had on children's pivotal developmental behaviours. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17048806 Children with Down syndrome often display speech-comprehensibility and grammatical deficits beyond what would be predicted based upon general mental age. Historically, speech-comprehensibility has often been treated using traditional articulation therapy and oral-motor training so there may be little or no coordination of grammatical and speechcomprehensibility treatment. The purpose of this paper is to provide the rationale for and preliminary evidence in support of integrating speech and grammatical intervention using a type of recast treatment in six children with Down syndrome. Speech-comprehensibility and MLU growth in generalisation sessions occurred in 4/6 and 5/6 participants, respectively. Using multiple baseline design logic, two of these participants showed evidence of treatment effects on speech-comprehensibility and two in MLU in generalisation sessions, respectively. The study constitutes a conservative test of the intervention effects for reasons that are discussed. The theoretical and applied significance of these findings are discussed. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17048805 Results indicate that Down syndrome negatively affected language development. Additionally, frequency of optimal parental responding predicted later productive language

above and beyond etiology. Finally, canonical vocal communication and commenting predicted later productive language only in children without Down syndrome. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15176918

This study investigated the hypothesis that training of mothers with Down's syndrome children would be beneficial both to the child and parents. The mothers were taught behaviour modification techniques based on learning theory and were given group discussions on dealing with their family or personal problems. The subjects were 16 mothers with a Down's syndrome child, divided into two groups on the basis of their child's sex and chronological and mental ages. The Griffiths Scale was used for assessment. The mothers in the treatment group received 12 sessions of training and group counseling over a 6-month period, whereas the control mothers received no additional attention except the usual routine from the general practitioner and health visitor. The result show clear gains to both the child and mother in the treatment group. The child improved, especially in language development as well as in the other areas, and the mother-gained more confidence and competence in her daily management of the child.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/127552 http://adc.bmj.com/content/50/5/383.full.pdf Summary. An investigation was carried out to determine whether cognitive development in the Down's Syndrome (DS) infant is identical in nature with that of the Normal (N) infant, even though manifesting a general retardation. Longitudinal investigation was carried out of Object Permanence development in a group of 8 DS infants and a group of 26 N infants. As expected, DS infants manifested delayed achievement of all steps in the sequence. In addition, however, DS infants were less likely than N infants to repeat an achieved success on the following test session. Further, and in contrast to the N infants, errors committed by the DS infants tended not to conform to the characteristic error pattern theoretically predicted for each task. It was concluded that identity in development across the two populations holds at the level of first achievement only. Cognitive development in the DS infant must be considered not merely slow but rather, in important respects, different from that in the normal infant. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2044-8279.1983.tb02534.x/abstract

RESULTS: Most of parents noticed signs of physical sexual development. Over 60% of adolescents reacted to these changes showing interest. About 70% of girls had menarche. 91% of parents observed changes in behavior - instability of mood, revolt and shame. 37% of parents talked with their child on sexual topics, most of them answered to child's interest. 47% of youth, especially boys, showed interest in opposite sex. Half of the youth had plans of having a family, nevertheless most of parents did not approve starting family by their children. When asked about means of contraception, parents preferred contraceptive pills and sterilization. 34% of parents

would panic at the information of their children's pregnancy. 23% wouldn't accept marriage between adults with DS, 66% were against having offspring by them. CONCLUSIONS: The psychosexual development of people with DS is characterized by similar problems as the puberty of healthy adolescents. The essential issue is the necessity of the sex education and support for youth with DS, which will allow to avoid sexual abuse as well as asexual treatment of adolescents.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19239790