Response Inhibition and Interference Suppression in Individuals With Down Syndrome Compared to Typically Developing Children

Laura Traverso, Martina Fontana, Maria Carmen Usai, Maria C. Passolunghi

The present study aims to investigate inhibition in individuals with Down Syndrome compared to typically developing children with different inhibitory tasks tapping response inhibition and interference suppression. Previous studies that aimed to investigate inhibition in individuals with Down Syndrome reported contradictory results that are difficult to compare given the different types of inhibitory tasks used and the lack of reference to a theoretical model of inhibition that was tested in children (see Bunge et al., 2002; Gandolfi et al., 2014). Three groups took part in the study: 32 individuals with Down Syndrome (DS) with a mean age of 14 years and 4 months, 35 typically developing children 5 years of age (5TD), and 30 typically developing children 6 years of age (6TD). No difference emerged among the groups in fluid intelligence. Based on a confirmatory factor analysis, two different inhibition factors were identified (response inhibition and interference suppression), and two composite scores were calculated. An ANOVA was then executed with the composite inhibitory scores as dependent variables and group membership as the between-subject variable to explore the group differences in inhibition components. The 6TD group outperformed the 5TD group in both response inhibition and interference suppression component scores. No differences were found in both inhibition components between the DS group and 5TD. In contrast, the 6TD group outperformed the DS group in both response inhibition and in the interference suppression component's scores. Summarizing, our findings show that both response inhibition and interference suppression significantly increased during school transition and that individuals with DS showed a delay in both response inhibition and interference suppression components compared to typically developing 6-year-olds, but their performance was similar to typically developing 5-year-olds.