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Impairments in Social Referencing: Down Syndrom and Williams Syndrome
The socially guided form of learning, referred to as social referencing, is critical for the development of children’s understanding of other people and their environment. Research by John (2011) indicates that the onset of the social referencing process is delayed in children with developmental delays or neurodevelopmental disorders such as Down Syndrome or Williams Syndrome.

For children with Down Syndrome, it is particularly difficult to comprehend visual, auditory and other sensory information at a high speed. They also display slow reaction times and a low degree of spontaneous activity, increasing the need for extra encouragement when learning or exploring. Research by Knieps et al. (1994) reports that children with developmental delays do not show evidence of using social referencing to regulate their behavior. Although these children look at their parents in situations that ordinarily elicit social referencing, affective parental communications about ambiguous events did not influence their behavior. In their study, Knieps et al. (1994) observed that infants with Down Syndrome did not match their parents positive expressions and expressed affect opposite to their parent's fearful expression. The affective expressions of infants with Down Syndrome were influenced by parental affect; however, the expressions were incongruent. They express more positivity than negativity following a fearful message provided by the referent. This supports the suggestion that children with Down Syndrome have specific deficits in the capacity to process emotional information.

Individuals with Williams Syndrome typically demonstrate an overly friendly, affectionate and socially disinhibited personality. Furthermore, they also exhibit a short attention span, extra sensitivity to sounds and anxiety - especially about upcoming events. Toddlers with Williams Syndrome show atypically focused attention to an experimenters face during cognitive tasks. In a study by John (2011), children with Williams Syndrome were unable to locate an intended target even when a communicative eye-gaze gesture was added. They follow an adult's pointing gesture less often than typically developed children. Individuals with WS also evidence difficulty matching and labeling emotional expressions. They are significantly less accurate at identifying both facial and vocal expressions of fear. Their findings provide the indication that children with Williams Syndrome have difficulty comprehending the communicative significance of another person's fearful reactions. They would approach a stimulus in the Social Referencing task and formed a positive opinion of it, despite the experimenter's fearful response.