One in every 660 babies born throughout the world has Down syndrome (DS). In the United States the largest majority of whom are Hispanic, making Arizona an ideal location to conduct DS research. Due to medical advances, people with DS live twice as long today as they did in the early 1980's. Thus, more efforts need to be made to enhance the quality of life of adults with DS. The rationale for the proposed research is that persons with DS have been shown to perform unimanual discrete actions (e.g., reaching) better with visual information (i.e., visual-motor advantage), whereas my recent research has shown that persons with DS perform continuous and bimanual movements (e.g., clapping) better with auditory information (i.e., auditory-motor advantage). The gap in the research is that discrete and continuous movement tasks have not been compared within one study with different types of instructions. It is important to help people with DS perform all types of movements.
The specific aim i s to systematically determine the influence of different types of information (i.e., visual, auditory, verbal) on different types of drumming movements (i.e., discrete, continuous, unimanual, bimanual). Based on the research of others and myself, I predict that adults with DS will show a visual-motor advantage for discrete versions of the task, but an auditory-motor advantage for continuous versions of the task; whereas mental, chronological, and undifferentiated developmental disability comparison groups will respond similarly to all instructions on all tasks. I also predict that unimanual and bimanual movements will benefit from similar instructions, however different methods of instruction have not been examined for bimanual discrete or unimanual continuous tasks in adults with DS. The long-range goal is to expand on the knowledge gained from this study to learning studies to understand the long-term effects of different types of instruction for different types of movements in adults and children with DS. The results of this research are significant because the proposed research will examine the predictions of a model of atypical cerebral specialization for persons with DS to different perceptual-motor tasks. This information is critical in order to communicate effectively to people with DS in a way that reduces frustration and confusion for all involved. The methods for teaching people with DS could be radically improved by this research.
| Ringenbach, Shannon D R; Mulvey, Genna M; Chen, Chih-Chia J J et al. (2012) Unimanual and bimanual continuous movements benefit from visual instructions in persons with Down syndrome. J Mot Behav 44:233-9 |
| Mulvey, G M; Ringenbach, S D R; Jung, M L (2011) Reversal of handedness effects on bimanual coordination in adults with Down syndrome. J Intellect Disabil Res 55:998-1007 |
| Robertson Ringenbach, S D; Mulvey, G M; Beachy, C (2007) Persons with and without Down syndrome use similar strategies when using visual instructions for bimanual drumming. J Intellect Disabil Res 51:953-61 |
