FIGURE 1 - uploaded by Joan Stiles
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Top: The first nine items on the Test of Visual-Motor Integration (VMI), and the age norms for mastery are shown. Bottom: Elisa's mental age equivalent scores for VMI at three ages are presented along with her copies for the first nine VMI test items.
Source publication
Children with Williams syndrome (WS) have been reported to exhibit an unusual cognitive profile characterized by marked preservation of linguistic abilities and poor visuospatial abilities against a backdrop of generalized mental retardation. Much of the data documenting this profile come from studies of older children and adults with WS. Very few...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... VMI is a standardized test with well-established age norms. The age norms for each of the geometric forms considered in this study are indicated under each model VMI form in Figure 1. The developmental progres- sion for house drawing has not been standardized. ...
Context 2
... considering develop- mental change in Elisa's production of individual forms, it is useful to examine her overall scores on the VMI. Figure 1 provides a complete summary of Elisa's perfor- mance on the VMI over three ages. Her MA scores lag consistently behind her CA; indeed, the disparity between MA and CA increases with development. ...
Context 3
... 4 years, 9 months, Elisa was tested on the VMI (see Figure 1). She produced the vertical and horizontal lines and drew an irregular closed form for the circle. ...
Context 4
... the age of 5 years, 11 months, Elisa was again tested on the VMI (see Figure 1). Her circle was somewhat distorted but qualified as an accurate circle. ...
Context 5
... persistent use of the square roof continued, despite the fact that in all of the training sessions roofs were depicted as triangles. The first triangular roofs in spontaneous drawing ap- peared only after specific and extended training on a very similar form, the letter A. In both free drawing and on the VMI, the first triangles Elisa produced were in fact As (see Figures 1 and 6b, age 5 years, 11 months). It appears that with lengthy specific training on the letter, she was able to generalize and incorporate the basic triangular shape in her spontaneous drawing. ...
Context 6
... a 6-month period, the triangle and the A forms appeared to be conflated in Elisa's drawings. However, in her fi- nal VMI at the age of 6 years, 7 months (see Figure 1), the distinction between the A and the triangle form appears to be complete. For the first time, Elisa drew a rec- ognizable triangle when copying the model. ...
Context 7
... the ages of 5 years, 0 months and 5 years, 7 months, the changes ob- served in Elisa's drawings of people are gradual. They consist primarily of the elaboration of details. Figure 10a shows a well-proportioned man with hair, ears, and contrasting shoes. The person in Figure 10b has a rounded body and fingers. ...
Context 8
... consist primarily of the elaboration of details. Figure 10a shows a well-proportioned man with hair, ears, and contrasting shoes. The person in Figure 10b has a rounded body and fingers. FIGURE 8 In this series of drawings, the addition of featural detail is evident. ...
Context 9
... the features are added in the context of instruction during therapy (Figures a and b); later, they are added spontaneously (Figure c). Figure 10c shows a well-organized figure, with closed forms for eyes, hands, and feet. The woman in Figure 10d has contrasting earrings. ...
Context 10
... the features are added in the context of instruction during therapy (Figures a and b); later, they are added spontaneously (Figure c). Figure 10c shows a well-organized figure, with closed forms for eyes, hands, and feet. The woman in Figure 10d has contrasting earrings. The Santa Claus, shown in Figure 10e, is in full costume, including a beard. ...
Context 11
... woman in Figure 10d has contrasting earrings. The Santa Claus, shown in Figure 10e, is in full costume, including a beard. During this period, all of Elisa's spontaneous drawings consisted of single figures. ...
Context 12
... major advance during the period from 5 years, 7 months to 6 years, 7 months is the shift to compositional drawings. Elisa began to combine features, placing her people in scenes with other people, houses, grass, the sun, and other objects ( Figure 11). She often described the scenes, identifying the people and ob- jects as she drew them. ...
Context 13
... characters in the drawing are now shown interacting with other people or engaged in an activity. In Figures 11c, 11d, and 11f, the people are holding hands or hugging each other. In Figure 11a, the people are holding balloons; in Figure 11g, the man is catching the sun; and, Figure 11j shows a Halloween scene in which people are dressed as witches, eating popcorn, and playing both inside and outside the school. ...
Context 14
... Figures 11c, 11d, and 11f, the people are holding hands or hugging each other. In Figure 11a, the people are holding balloons; in Figure 11g, the man is catching the sun; and, Figure 11j shows a Halloween scene in which people are dressed as witches, eating popcorn, and playing both inside and outside the school. Finally, in some of the drawings in this period (Figures 11e, 11h, and 11i), letters start to appear in some of her drawings: Elisa had begun to learn to write in her therapy sessions. ...
Context 15
... Figures 11c, 11d, and 11f, the people are holding hands or hugging each other. In Figure 11a, the people are holding balloons; in Figure 11g, the man is catching the sun; and, Figure 11j shows a Halloween scene in which people are dressed as witches, eating popcorn, and playing both inside and outside the school. Finally, in some of the drawings in this period (Figures 11e, 11h, and 11i), letters start to appear in some of her drawings: Elisa had begun to learn to write in her therapy sessions. ...
Context 16
... Figures 11c, 11d, and 11f, the people are holding hands or hugging each other. In Figure 11a, the people are holding balloons; in Figure 11g, the man is catching the sun; and, Figure 11j shows a Halloween scene in which people are dressed as witches, eating popcorn, and playing both inside and outside the school. Finally, in some of the drawings in this period (Figures 11e, 11h, and 11i), letters start to appear in some of her drawings: Elisa had begun to learn to write in her therapy sessions. ...
Context 17
... Figure 11a, the people are holding balloons; in Figure 11g, the man is catching the sun; and, Figure 11j shows a Halloween scene in which people are dressed as witches, eating popcorn, and playing both inside and outside the school. Finally, in some of the drawings in this period (Figures 11e, 11h, and 11i), letters start to appear in some of her drawings: Elisa had begun to learn to write in her therapy sessions. She appears to be signing or describing the content of her drawings. ...
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It has been claimed that in the language systems of people with Williams syndrome (WS), syntax is intact but lexical memory is impaired. Evidence has come from past tense elicitation tasks with a small number of participants where individuals with WS are said to have a specific deficit in forming irregular past tenses. However, typically developing...
Williams syndrome (WS) is one of very few neurodevelopmental disorders associated with a well-known genetic defect, which offers an exceptional framework for understanding the relationship between genes, brain functioning and behavior. Also, this syndrome is drawing attention of the scientific community due to the unique cognitive profile of streng...
Citations
... Visual-spatial difficulties have mainly been evidenced through the use of tasks that require the copying of geometric figures or objects (Bellugi et al. 1997;Bellugi et al. 1988;Bertrand et al. 1997;Bertrand & Mervis 1996;Dykens et al. 2001;Georgopoulos et al. 2004;Stiles et al. 2000), pattern construction (Bihrle et al. 1989;Farran et al. 2001;Farran & Jarrold 2003;Hoffman et al. 2003;Klein & Mervis 1999;Rondan et al. 2003;Udwin & Yule 1990) and navigation tasks (Broadbent et al. 2015;Broadbent et al. 2014;Farran et al. 2010;Mandolesi et al. 2009). Deficits in these abilities are considered to negatively impact academic achievements (e.g. ...
Background:
Williams syndrome (WS) is characterised by severe deficits in visual-spatial abilities in contrast to relatively well-developed language abilities. There is very limited knowledge about visual-motor integration (VMI) in people with WS.
Method:
Twenty-six participants with WS aged 6 to 41 years were assessed with all three tests of the Beery-VMI test, namely the VMI test, the visual perception test (VP) and the motor coordination test (MC). Their results were compared with those of 154 typically developing children (TD) aged 4 to 12.
Results:
No influence of age on the three tested abilities was found amongst the participants with WS in comparison with the TD children. The participants with WS scored similarly to the 5-year-old TD children in all three tasks; their scores on the VMI correlated with the results on the VP and MC tests, which were similar to those of the TD children. Finally, the scores on the non-verbal intelligence test (Raven Coloured Progressive Matrices) were highly predictive of the scores in the VMI and VP tests and partially explain the variance in the MC scores.
Conclusions:
The present study is the first to use all three tasks of the Beery-VMI test. For the TD children, the performances on the three subtests did not show the same developmental trajectory. In contrast, the participants with WS did not show the same developmental trajectory. The participants with WS exhibited poor performances on all tasks with scores comparable with the 5-year-old TD children. As high correlations between these abilities were observed, improving VP and MC could help the development of VMI, which in turn could improve visual-spatial abilities in individuals with WS.
... Figura 7. Dibujo de una casa realizado por tres niños con un desarrollo típico a tres edades diferentes; se señala en paréntesis la edad en años y meses (Stile et al., 2000). ...
... People with WS are thus at risk to present a various magnitude processing deficit due to the structural and functional anomalies of their parietal cortex. As a matter of fact, their cognitive functioning is indeed characterized by severe impairments in a variety of visuo-spatial abilities supported by the parietal cortex [14,25262728293031323334, which contrasted with a far better preserved verbal function [15– 17,30,35,36]. There is thus a strong probability that people with WS would also experience difficulties in processing spatial magnitudes. ...
... People with WS are thus at risk to present a various magnitude processing deficit due to the structural and functional anomalies of their parietal cortex. As a matter of fact, their cognitive functioning is indeed characterized by severe impairments in a variety of visuo-spatial abilities supported by the parietal cortex [14,25262728293031323334, which contrasted with a far better preserved verbal function [15– 17,30,35,36]. There is thus a strong probability that people with WS would also experience difficulties in processing spatial magnitudes. ...
... People with WS are thus at risk to present a various magnitude processing deficit due to the structural and functional anomalies of their parietal cortex. As a matter of fact, their cognitive functioning is indeed characterized by severe impairments in a variety of visuo-spatial abilities supported by the parietal cortex [14,25262728293031323334, which contrasted with a far better preserved verbal function [15– 17,30,35,36]. There is thus a strong probability that people with WS would also experience difficulties in processing spatial magnitudes. ...
For some authors, the human sensitivity to numerosities would be grounded in our ability to process non-numerical magnitudes. In the present study, the developmental relationships between non numerical and numerical magnitude processing are examined in people with Williams syndrome (WS), a genetic disorder known to associate visuo-spatial and math learning disabilities. Twenty patients with WS and 40 typically developing children matched on verbal or non-verbal abilities were administered three comparison tasks in which they had to compare numerosities, lengths or durations. Participants with WS showed lower acuity (manifested by a higher Weber fraction) than their verbal matched peers when processing numerical and spatial but not temporal magnitudes, indicating that they do not present a domain-general dysfunction of all magnitude processing. Conversely, they do not differ from non-verbal matched participants in any of the three tasks. Finally, correlational analyses revealed that non-numerical and numerical acuity indexes were both related to the first mathematical acquisitions but not with later arithmetical skills.
... We used a house as the to-be-copied model; Bertrand et al. (1997) suggested that a house figure was complex and contained many embedded parts and is thus ideal to determine hierarchical drawing ability. A house figure has been used previously in WS research and has shown that individuals with WS produce fewer global elements and produce seriously disorganised figures, relative to mental agematched and chronological age-matched controls (Bertrand et al., 1997; Stiles et al., 2000; Wang & Bellugi, 1993). We hypothesised that the WS group would look to the model less frequently and make more errors than a TD control group; infrequent looks to the model could be the root of poorer replications of the model. ...
Drawings by individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) typically lack cohesion. The popular hypothesis is that this is a result of excessive focus on local-level detail at the expense of global configuration. In this study, we explored a novel hypothesis that inadequate attention might underpin drawing in WS. WS and typically developing (TD) non-verbal ability matched groups copied and traced a house figure comprised of geometric shapes. The house was presented on a computer screen for five second periods and participants pressed a key to re-view the model. Frequency of key-presses indexed the looks to the model. The order that elements were replicated was recorded to assess hierarchisation of elements. If a lack of attention to the model explained poor drawing performance, we expected participants with WS to look less frequently to the model than TD children when copying. If a local-processing preference underpins drawing in WS, more local than global elements would be produced. Results supported the first, but not second hypothesis. The WS group looked to the model infrequently, but global, not local, parts were drawn first, scaffolding local-level details. Both groups adopted a similar order of drawing and tracing of parts, suggesting typical, although delayed strategy-use in the WS group. Additionally both groups drew larger elements of the model before smaller elements, suggested a size-bias when drawing.
... Mark-making ability is generally poor in WS; difficulties with handwriting are observed in 93% of individuals with WS (Semel & Rosner, 2003, p. 154). Throughout development, drawings made by individuals with WS are often seriously disorganised, lack detail and exhibit less mastery than typically developing (TD) individuals of the same mental (MA) or chronological (CA) age (Bertrand et al., 1997; Stiles, Capirci & Volterra, 2000; Wang & Bellugi, 1993). Until recently, this pattern of behaviour in WS had been explained by the local processing hypothesis which suggests that when copying an image, individuals with WS typically attempt to depict the details of the image but fail to replicate the overall spatial arrangement of these details (e.g. ...
... Smith and Gilchrist (2005a) demonstrated a strong tendency of drawers to perceptually group edge markers of shapes (as in the Edge Marker condition used in the current experiment) by completion across the space between markers, even in instances when this was not requested. Dot-joining also requires perceptual grouping of elements and has been used to facilitate drawing of simple shapes in TD children (Broderick & Laszlo, 1988) and an individuals with WS (Stiles et al., 2000). These conditions encourage participants to group the given elements to create lines within the figure on the basis of perceptual grouping factors such as similarity, closure and proximity (Wertheimer, 1923). ...
Individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) produce drawings that are disorganised, likely due to an inability to replicate numerous spatial relations between parts. This study attempted to circumvent these drawing deficits in WS when copying complex combinations of one, two and three shapes. Drawing decisions were reduced by introducing a number of facilitators, for example, by using distinct colours and including facilitatory cues on the response sheet. Overall, facilitation improved drawing in the WS group to a comparable level of accuracy as typically developing participants (matched for non-verbal ability). Drawing accuracy was greatest in both groups when planning demands (e.g. starting location, line lengths and changes in direction) were reduced by use of coloured figures and providing easily distinguished and clearly grouped facilitatory cues to form each shape. This study provides the first encouraging evidence to suggest that drawing of complex shapes in WS can be facilitated; individuals with WS might be receptive to remediation programmes for drawing and handwriting.
... Una ulteriore tecnica di intervento per l'abilitazione della coordinazione motoria visuospaziale è rappresentata dalla mediazione verbale durante il disegno, che rappresenta uno dei compiti più difficoltosi per il bambino con SW (Volterra et al., 1994;Stiles, Sabbadini, Capirci, Volterra, 2000). ...
Review on the latest advances in knowledge on the neurogenetic fundamentals and on the peculiar cognitive profile associated with Williams Syndrome, with emphasis on the most advanced techniques for the social inclusion of the child with Williams Syndrome.
... Koppitz's juga melakukan penskoran emosi melalui Draw A Person (DAP). Selain gambar dapat mengukur emosi, hasil gambar anak dapat juga digunakan untuk mengukur kemampuan sosial, interaksi dengan orang tua, ada-tidaknya masalah perilaku, deteksi hambatan mental dan perkembangan kognitif (Konold dan Pianta, 2005;Stiles, Joan dkk., 2000). ...
This research aimed to compare the picture drawn by children aged 4and 6 year old. 68 students of kindergarten school and in grade one (firstyear) of elementary school involved as participants were asked to draw aperson then assessed based on Florence Goodenough list which revisedby Harrish (1963). To avoid bias, the result of the drawing scored bydrawing teacher and psychology lecturer. Score will be given if there areany similarity score filled in both form in the same child. The result indicatedthat there are differences and similarities between the picture drawn bychildren aged 4 and 6 years old.
... and loss of approximately 22 genes in this region (Bayé s, Magano, Rivera, Flores, & Pé res Jurado, 2003). Individuals with WS are commonly characterized as displaying an intriguing neurocognitive functioning, described as the ''Williams Syndrome Cognitive Profile'', in which a dissociation between cognitive domains, namely between verbal and non-verbal abilities, is described (Atkinson et al., 2001; Grant, Valian, & Karmiloff-Smith, 2002; Jarrold, Baddeley, & Hewes, 1998; Jarrold, Baddeley, Hewes, & Phillips, 2001; Mervis et al., 2000; Pagon, Bennett, LaVeck, Stewart, & Johnson, 1987; Stiles, Sabbadini, Capirci, & Volterra, 2000; Udwin & Yule, 1990). Specifically, the evidence of a superior performance in verbal tasks in WS has been proposed as being the result of an effective contribution of the working memory phonological loop in promoting retention and manipulation of verbal items and thus enhancing syntactic abilities (Jarrold et al., 2001; Nichols et al., 2004; Vicari, Bellucci, & Carlesimo, 2001; Vicari et al., 2004; Volterra, Caselli, Capirci, Tonucci, & Vicari, 2003 Williams syndrome (WS) is a neurodevelopmental genetic disorder, often referred as being characterized by dissociation between verbal and non-verbal abilities, although the number of studies disputing this proposal is emerging. ...
