On the difficulty of relational concepts among participants with Down syndrome

Intellectual disability; Down syndrome; lexical development; Boehm Test of Basic Concepts; relational concepts; similar sequence hypothesis; differential item functioning; transformed item difficulties; Delta plot

Abstract :

[en] The aim of the study was to compare the difficulty of relational concepts among participants with and without intellectual disability. The French versions of the Boehm Tests of Basic Concepts Third Edition (Preschool and Kindergarten to 2nd grade) were administered to three groups of 47 participants individually matched on their total raw score on the tests. The first group comprised participants with intellectual disability of undifferentiated etiology, the second, participants with Down syndrome and the third, typical children. Item analyses using the transformed item difficulties method to detect differential item functioning across groups showed that the groups' rank-orders of item difficulty were highly similar. It is concluded that, all things being equal, relational concepts are of comparable difficulty and follow a similar sequence of development whatever the cognitive and etiological status of participants. Methodological and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.

Disciplines :

Mathematics

Author, co-author :

Facon, Bruno

Magis, David ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département de mathématique > Statistique mathématique

Courbois, Yannick

Language :

English

Title :

On the difficulty of relational concepts among participants with Down syndrome

Publication date :

2012

Journal title :

Research in Developmental Disabilities

ISSN :

0891-4222

eISSN :

1873-3379

Publisher :

Pergamon Press - An Imprint of Elsevier Science

Volume :

Pages :

60-68

Peer reviewed :

Peer Reviewed verified by ORBi

Available on ORBi :

since 26 August 2011

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2 (2 by ULiège)

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