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Age 18 months
Published in Ajay Sharma, Helen Cockerill, Lucy Sanctuary, Mary Sheridan's From Birth to Five Years, 2021
Ajay Sharma, Helen Cockerill, Lucy Sanctuary
Fascinated by household objects and imitates simple, everyday activities such as feeding a doll, reading a book, brushing the floor, washing clothes (‘domestic mimicry' or ‘deferred imitation') (15–18 months).
Using Behavioral Approaches to Assess Memory, Imitation and Motor Performance in Children with Angelman Syndrome: Results of a Pilot Study
Published in Developmental Neurorehabilitation, 2019
Since this memory paradigm has never been used before with children with AS, it was difficult to predict the outcome. Elicited and deferred imitation paradigms (the latter is where children are permitted to observe but not imitate action sequences prior to a delay) have been utilized with children with Down syndrome (another genetic ID syndrome), yielding evidence they are able to remember action sequences after delay intervals ranging from 5 min to 1 month and have difficulty recalling action sequences in correct temporal order.57–59 Memory scores of children with AS in this study were variable, such that no child performed at the ceiling of the test whereas some children received the lowest possible score of 0. Floor effects on assessment instruments are often an indication that test requirements exceed some children’s abilities and in this case could reflect problems during the initial learning phase, difficulty performing the motor tasks independently and/or the presence of memory impairments. For some action sequences, steps could be performed in any order (arbitrary relations) while other action sequences required steps to be performed in a specific order to enable an end state to be achieved (enabling relations). For infants and young children, there is evidence of better ordered recall for action sequences that involve enabling relations versus arbitrary relations.47 The extent to which these factors may have impacted children’s performance is unknown since the list of test items varied and there was no attempt to control for the level of difficulty of action sequences. These measurement issues could be addressed in future studies by using a consistent list of test items and comparing differences between children’s baseline rates of spontaneous production of target actions to their performance after observing and imitating the modeled action sequences. Future studies could also help to establish whether shorter time intervals between the initial exposure to target actions and subsequent memory trials or simplifying task demands by presenting fewer action sequences reduce floor effects.