Comparing the broad socio-cognitive profile of youth with Williams syndrome and 22q11.2 deletion syndrome.
O Weisman, R Feldman, M Burg-Malki and 4 others
PMID 28990288WHAT IT FOUND
Children with Williams syndrome labeled happy faces better than children with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome, but both groups were below typically developing controls on matching emotions, false belief, and inferring traits from motives.
Key findings
01Children with Williams syndrome labeled happy faces more accurately than children with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome.
02Children with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome performed better than children with Williams syndrome and idiopathic developmental disability on false-belief tasks, while typically developing children scored highest.
03Children with Williams syndrome were more willing to be friends with a character whose motive was negative than children from the other groups.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
Each group was small: 18 children with Williams syndrome, 24 with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome, 20 with idiopathic developmental disability, and 20 typically developing controls. The facial emotion recognition task was developed for this study, and two fear items were removed after typically developing participants did not answer them adequately. No autism comparison group or validated autism measures were included, so syndrome-specific social cognition cannot be separated from broader autism-related profiles. Typically developing children did not receive IQ testing because of review-board restrictions, so mental-age matching and covariates were used instead. The study measured socio-cognitive tasks, not therapy outcomes, and the story-based training suggestion in the discussion was not tested.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflict of interest. The paper is supported by non-U.S. government and N.I.H. extramural research funding.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the Williams syndrome happy-face advantage as proof that social cognition is generally intact. The same group was below typically developing controls on emotion matching, false belief, and motive-based trait inference, and no treatment was tested.