1. Aylin Küntay Language and Communicative Disorders Meeting 12
Williams syndrome
Aylin Küntay
Language and Communicative Disorders
Meeting 12

2. What is WS? A genetic disorder Distinctive facial features
Cardiovascular problems
Learning disabilities
A special cognitive profile

3. Cognitive characteristics
75% mental retardation; 25% learning disabilities
Extreme weakness in visuospatial construction
Better performance on verbal measures than on visuospatial measures
Mullen Scales of Early Learning

4. Mullen 4 subtests Visual reception
Fine motor (primarily visuospatial construction)
Receptive language
Expressive language (includes auditory rote memory)
Also, Mean Early Learning Composite score

5. Linguistic development in WS
Onset of vocabulary development is delayed
Produce referential language several months before they begin to comprehend or produce referential pointing gestures
Problems of visuospatial construction and interest in people rather than objects
Expressive vocabularies of 24-m-olds are much larger than those of same-CA children with Down Syndrome
Syntactic abilities better than the the DS group as well
Auditory rote memory is a strength

6. Visuspatial construction
Pattern construction (block design)
Drawing
More difficulty than DS even when copying simple geometric figures
Focus on parts rather than wholes
Bicycle example on p. 153
Great difficulty with the fine motor test of Mullen, performance on visual reception much better, and equivalent to language scores
Corsi block tapping task
Measure of spatial working memory that involves replicating block tap sequences of various lengths produced by the researcher

7. WS cognitive profile
Digit recall, naming/definitions > 1st percentile
Pattern construction < 20th percentile
Pattern construction score < mean score for the core subtests of Differential Abilities test
Pattern construction score < digit recall score

8. Personality, temperament
Highly sociable, visible
Highly anxious
High in empathy
High in Unshyness
Early manisfestation
Intense look at human faces
No fear of strangers