Parents of children with Down Syndrome know that teaching their young ones how to master a simple motor task, such as tying a shoe, can be particularly frustrating.
Dr. Brian Maraj has some advice for them: show, don't tell.
"Children with Down Syndrome respond much better to visual examples," says Maraj, associate professor in the University of Alberta Faculty of Physical Education and Recreation. "For example, you can tell them to put a red block on a yellow block, but that won't be nearly as effective as if you show them how to do it. It's not that they don't understand verbal instructions, it's that verbal instructions are not as effective as using a visual protocol."
Not only has Maraj identified this trait in people with Down Syndrome, he also believes he can explain why it happens.
For most people, control mechanisms for speech perception and movement execution are found in the same side of the brain?the left-hemisphere. However, for people with Down Syndrome, the two functions are split: movement execution is generally found in the left hemisphere, while speech perception is preferentially in the right.
"Because children with Down Syndrome have this lateralization to the right hemisphere for speech perception and to the left hemisphere in movement production, they tend to show greater difficulty in integrating verbal instructions for movement because each is associated with a different hemisphere," Maraj says.
About one in every 1,000 people have Down Syndrome, a congenital condition that creates a number of developmental challenges for those who have it, including a tendency to have smaller hands, shorter limbs and lower IQs.
"People with Down Syndrome make up an integral part of our population," Maraj says. "And we're trying to understand and facilitate effective strategies for learning?and not just to help them pick up motor skills but also to improve their general cognitive learning."
To aid in his quest, Maraj has been awarded a 2007/08 McCalla Professorship, a coveted U of A appointment that provides funding and administrative support to help chosen professors advance their teaching and research.
"In the past, the McCalla was an opportunity to focus on research without teaching, but in the current phase, which is really exciting, you receive funding to help you integrate your teaching and research," Maraj says.
In his unique?and successful?McCalla application, Maraj proposed the creation of undergraduate student research teams, which he called KURT, for Kinesiology Undergraduate Research Teams. The students will join Maraj in his lab and help him create novel visual stimuli in order to develop new experiments and a better understanding of how people with Down Syndrome learn skills, particularly motor skills.
"This work is enjoyable and rewarding in so many different aspects," Maraj says. "The opportunity to work with students in the lab is great, and the opportunity to have an impact in the life of people with Down Syndrome is great, and the opportunity to help parents and clinicians in the future is also great."
In the past, Maraj has conducted his research in collaboration with the Down Syndrome Research Foundation of British Columbia and the Edmonton Down Syndrome Society. As well as the McCalla professorship this year, Maraj has received research funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the US.
"In everything that we do we're looking for opportunities to help in long term, to get a basic understanding of how people with Down Syndrome can learn and control movement skill, and then we want to transfer that information to applications that can help in real world," Maraj says.
"There are so many wonderful people [at U of A] doing fabulous work, I'm just trying to do my own little part, and just to be a part of that is pretty neat," he added.