Project 172624

In British Columbia 2 in every 1000 births are of children with Down syndrome. This is a genetic disorder which results in an array of symptoms including mental and sensory-motor difficulties. People with Down syndrome are at high risk for obesity and cardiovascular disease as they age and inactivity is a significant risk factor. The acquisition of basic motor skills enables and motivates engagement in activities for life. This program of research is designed to fill a knowledge gap about the action-observation process in people with Down syndrome. The specific aim is to study how these people observe and attend to actions in others in order to facilitate the learning of physical skills. Surprisingly very little is know about how to effectively teach people with Down syndrome motor skills and the processes engaged during observation and motor learning. These individuals appear to learn well from demonstrations, in comparison to mental age matched controls, yet there is evidence from brain imaging studies that this process is different to typically developing individuals, not involving activation of motor-areas of the brain. Further, no one has systematically studied what information drives this observational learning process. During actual movement, there is evidence that people with Down syndrome have difficulties predicting the future effects of their action, in terms of how an action looks and feels. We do not know whether this difficulty extends to the observation process and hence this research will help answer this question through studies requiring the prediction of movement effects when watching others. We will use behavioural methods to study these questions, involving the measurement of responses to demonstrated actions, both in the short term and long-term learning of novel actions. This research will direct evidence-based interventions for the teaching of motor skills and help to promote engagement in physical activity among people with Down syndrome.