Overlapping numerical cognition impairments in Chromosome 22q11.2 Deletion and Turner Syndromes.
Overlapping numerical cognition impairments in Chromosome 22q11.2 Deletion and Turner Syndromes.
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Date
2007
Authors
Simon, T.J.
Takarae, Y.
DeBoer, T.
McDonald-McGinn, D.M.
Zackai, E.H.
Ross, J.L.
Advisor
Citation
Simon, T.J., Takarae, Y., DeBoer, T., McDonald-McGinn, D.M., Zackai, E.H., Ross, J.L. (2007). Overlapping numerical cognition impairments in Chromosome 22q11.2 Deletion and Turner Syndromes. Neuropsychologia.
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Abstract
Children with one of two genetic disorders (chromosome 22q11.2 deletion syndrome and Turner syndrome) as well typically developing
controls, participated in three cognitive processing experiments. Two experiments were designed to test cognitive processes involved in basic
aspects numerical cognition. The third was a test of simple manual motor reaction time. Despite significant differences in global intellectual
abilities, as measured by IQ tests, performance on the two numerical cognition tasks differed little between the two groups of children with genetic
disorders. However, both performed significantly more poorly than did controls. The pattern of results are consistent with the hypothesis that
impairments were not due to global intellectual ability but arose in specific cognitive functions required by different conditions within the tasks.
The fact that no group differences were found in the reaction time task, despite significant differences in the standardized processing speed measure,
further supports the interpretation that specific cognitive processing impairments and not global intellectual or processing speed impairments explain
the pattern of results. The similarity in performance on these tasks of children with unrelated genetic disorders counters the view that numerical
cognition is under any direct genetic control. Instead, our findings are consistent with the view that disturbances in foundational spatiotemporal
cognitive functions contribute to the development of atypical representations and processes in the domains of basic magnitude comparison and
simple numerical enumeration.