Correlates of early cognition in infants with Down syndrome

Background While delays in cognitive development are detectable during early development in Down syndrome, the neuropsychological and biomedical underpinnings of cognitive skill acquisition in this population remain poorly understood. Method To explore this issue, 38 infants with Down syndrome [mean chronological age = 9.65 months; SD = 3.64] completed the Bayley Scales of Infant Development-III and a set of laboratory tasks that measured sustained attention (duration of visual attention during a 1-min object exploration task), attention shifting (mean latency to shift attention on an alternating object presentation task) and visual short-term memory (dishabituation to a novel object on a change preference task). Results Latency to shift attention was negatively associated with Bayley Cognitive Scale raw scores, even when controlling for the effects of chronological age, r (33) = -.41, P = .02. In addition, prematurity status was associated with latency to shift attention. Conclusions Early attention shifting may be an important factor that facilitates overall cognitive skill acquisition in infants with Down syndrome, and premature birth may be a risk factor for difficulties on this dimension.