Visuospatial and numerical cognitive deficits in children with chromosome 22q11.2 deletion syndrome

Abstract

This article presents some of the earliest evidence of visuospatial and numerical cognitive deficits in children with the chromosome 22q11.2 deletion syndrome; a common but ill-understood genetic disorder resulting in medical complications, cognitive impairment, and brain morphologic changes. Relative to a group of typically developing controls, deleted children performed more poorly on tests of visual attentional orienting, visual enumeration and relative numerical magnitude judgment. Results showed that performance deficits in children with the deletion could not be explained by a global deficit in psychomotor speed. Instead, our findings are supportive of the hypothesis that visuospatial and numerical deficits in children with the chromosome 22q11.2 deletion are due, at least in part, to posterior parietal dysfunction.

Fig. 1

Example stimulus configurations from Cueing task showing: initial configuration (top), valid cue to left side (center), and target (bottom).

Fig. 2

Reaction time and error data from the Cueing task with responses to targets that appeared in the left visual hemifield (left) and in the right visual hemifield (right).

Fig. 3

Reaction time and error data from the Enumeration task.

Fig. 4

Reaction time and error data from the Distance Effect task in which stimuli were presented as dot patterns and as Arabic numerals.