An investigation of the spontaneous alternation behavior of Down's syndrome children on tasks of varying discriminability

Abstract

Thirty Down's Syndrome children and thirty pre­ schoolers were used to investigate the effects of tasks of varying discriminability on spontaneous alternation behaviour. The experimental design was a 3 x 3 x 2 factorial arrangement of repeated measures with Conditions X Sex X Group as the three factors. Results revealed both groups alternated above chance but the discriminability only affected the preschoolers while the Down's Syndrome children showed little variability in their performance. It was postulated that although both groups had a choice-sequence preference of alternation, Down's Syndromes were merely alternating invariantly whereas the preschoolers were affected more by characteristics of the particular conditions.