Reactions of young children with Down's syndrome to an impossible task

The response to a shape‐sorting task that included both ‘possible’ and ‘impossible’ shapes was investigated in three groups of 3–5‐year‐old children: children with Down's syndrome (DS), normally developing children matched with the DS subjects for chronological age (CA), and normally developing children of matched mental ages (MA). DS subjects proved as capable as their MA and CA peers at matching the ‘possible’ shapes to their appropriate holes but behaved differently to both age‐ and stage‐matched children in response to the two ‘impossible’ shapes: they persisted significantly longer, showed little evidence of learning when represented with either shape, and failed to recognize that the perceptual information used in successfully matching the ‘possible’ shapes could also help in determining that the ‘impossible’ tasks were indeed impossible. When faced with failure on the ‘impossible’ tasks, DS subjects frequently adopted ‘switching out’ strategies, misusing their social skills or producing ‘party tricks' in order to divert attention to some less cognitively demanding activity. This appealing but task‐inappropriate behaviour may explain the stereotypical view of DS children as very sociable and affectionate children but very poor learners.