The block design task (BDT) is a visuospatial measure that individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) perform poorly on. However, it is unclear what underlies their impaired performance. This study investigated whether poorer performance is a result of visuospatial difficulties, executive function (EF) difficulties, atypical looking strategies, or a…

Stress and anxiety have a negative impact on working memory systems by competing for executive resources and attention. Broad memory deficits, anxiety, and elevated stress have been reported in individuals with chromosome 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11.2DS). We investigated anxiety and physiological stress reactivity in relation to visuospatial…

The ability to track moving objects is a crucial skill for performance in everyday spatial tasks. The tracking mechanism depends on representation of moving items as coherent entities, which follow the spatiotemporal constraints of objects in the world. In the present experiment, participants tracked 1 to 4 targets in a display of 8 identical…

Individuals with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11.2DS) are impaired at exploring visual information in space; however, not much is known about visual form discrimination in the syndrome. Thirty-five individuals with 22q11.2DS and 41 controls completed a form discrimination task with global forms made up of local elements. Affected individuals…

The aim of the present study was to compare visuospatial working memory performance in 18 individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) and 18 typically developing (TD) children matched for nonverbal mental age. Two aspects were considered: task presentation format (i.e., spatial-sequential or spatial-simultaneous), and level of attentional control…

Previous studies have shown that deficiencies in visuospatial perception and semantic processing in people with Williams syndrome (WS) are due to deficient central cohesiveness. Unlike previous studies that used abstract stimuli, this study used pictures to determine the relative ability of people with WS to integrate contextual information with…

Fragile X syndrome is the most common cause of inherited intellectual impairment and the most common single-gene cause of autism. Individuals with fragile X syndrome present with a neurobehavioural phenotype that includes selective deficits in spatiotemporal visual perception associated with neural processing in frontal-parietal networks of the…

Williams (WS) and Down (DS) syndromes are characterised by roughly opposing ability profiles. Relative verbal strengths and visuospatial difficulties have been reported in those with WS, while expressive language difficulties have been observed in individuals with DS. Few investigations into the executive function (EF) skills of these groups have…

22q11.2 Deletion Syndrome (22q11DS) is a common microdeletion disorder associated with mild to moderate intellectual disability and specific neurocognitive deficits, particularly in visual-motor and attentional abilities. Currently there is evidence that the visual-motor profile of 22q11DS is not entirely mediated by intellectual disability and…

Williams syndrome (WS), a genetic neurodevelopmental disorder due to microdeletion in chromosome 7, has been described as a syndrome with an intriguing socio-cognitive phenotype. Cognitively, the relative preservation of language and face processing abilities coexists with severe deficits in visual-spatial tasks, as well as in tasks involving…

Attentional problems are commonly reported as a feature of the behavioural profile in both Williams syndrome (WS) and Down's syndrome (DS). Recent studies have begun to investigate these impairments empirically, acknowledging the need for an approach that considers cross-syndrome comparisons and developmental changes across the different component…

The present study investigated verbal and spatial working memory (WM) functioning in individuals with the neuro-developmental disorder Williams syndrome (WS) using WM component tasks. While there is strong evidence of WM impairments in WS, previous research has focused on short-term memory and has neglected assessment of executive components of…

A number of recent studies suggest that DNA variation in the dopamine transporter gene (DAT1) influences spatial attention asymmetry in clinical populations such as ADHD, but confirmation in non-clinical samples is required. Since non-spatial factors such as attentional load have been shown to influence spatial biases in clinical conditions, here…

This study aimed to evaluate spatial function in subjects with Williams syndrome (WS) by using a large-scale task with multiple rewards and comparing the spatial abilities of WS subjects with those of mental age-matched control children. In the present spatial task, WS participants had to explore an open space to search nine rewards placed in…

Williams syndrome (WS) is a genetic disorder associated with severe visuospatial deficits, relatively strong language skills, heightened social interest, and increased attention to faces. On the basis of the visuospatial deficits, this disorder has been characterized primarily as a deficit of the dorsal stream, the occipitoparietal brain regions…