The Role of executive functions in social cognition among children with down syndrome: relationship patterns
dc.contributor.author
dc.date.accessioned
2016-09-20T12:20:39Z
dc.date.available
2016-09-20T12:20:39Z
dc.date.issued
2016-09-13
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dc.description.abstract
Many studies show a link between social cognition, a set of cognitive and emotional abilities applied to social situations, and executive functions in typical developing children. Children with Down syndrome (DS) show deficits both in social cognition and in some subcomponents of executive functions. However this link has barely been studied in this population. The aim of this study is to investigate the links between social cognition and executive functions among children with DS. We administered a battery of social cognition and executive function tasks (six theory of mind tasks, a test of emotion comprehension, and three executive function tasks) to a group of 30 participants with DS between 4 and 12 years of age. The same tasks were administered to a chronological-age control group and to a control group with the same linguistic development level. Results showed that apart from deficits in social cognition and executive function abilities, children with DS displayed a slight improvement with increasing chronological age and language development in those abilities. Correlational analysis suggested that working memory was the only component that remained constant in the relation patterns of the three groups of participants, being the relation patterns similar among participants with DS and the language development control group. A multiple linear regression showed that working memory explained above 50% of the variability of social cognition in DS participants and in language development control group, whereas in the chronological-age control group this component only explained 31% of the variability. These findings, and specifically the link between working memory and social cognition, are discussed on the basis of their theoretical and practical implications for children with DS. We discuss the possibility to use a working memory training to improve social cognition in this population
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application/pdf
dc.language.iso
eng
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Reproducció digital del document publicat a: http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01363
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Frontiers in Psychology, 2016, vol. 7, núm., art. 1363
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Articles publicats (D-PS)
dc.rights
Reconeixement 3.0 Espanya
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dc.source
Amadó Codony, Anna Serrat Sellabona, Elisabet Vallès Majoral, Eduard 2016 The Role of executive functions in social cognition among children with down syndrome: relationship patterns Frontiers in Psychology 7 Art. 1363
dc.title
The Role of executive functions in social cognition among children with down syndrome: relationship patterns
dc.type
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
dc.rights.accessRights
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
dc.type.version
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
dc.identifier.doi
dc.identifier.idgrec
025731
dc.identifier.eissn
1664-1078
1664-1078