Prospective control abilities during visuo-manual tracking in children with 22q11.2 Deletion syndrome compared to age- and IQ-matched controls

To examine whether children with a 22q11.2 Deletion syndrome (22q11.2DS) are able to use prospective control, 21 children with 22q11.2DS (mean age = 9.6 ± 1.9; mean FSIQ = 73.05 ± 10.2) and 21 control children (mean age = 9.6 ± 1.9; mean FSIQ = 73.38 ± 12.0) were asked to perform a visuo-manual tracking task in which they had to track a cursor rhythmically between 2 target zones. Children with 22q11.2DS performed worse than the age- and IQ-matched controls (higher absolute time and distance errors) suggesting that the 22q11.2DS group experiences an additional (syndrome specific) processing deficit that cannot be attributed to their lower intellectual abilities. The 22q11.2DS group neither the control group improved their tracking performance throughout five identical full feedback conditions of the tracking task possibly due to a slow visuo-motor adaptation process, a short span of attention and cognitive flexibility impairments. The results showed that both the 22q11.2DS group and the controls had difficulties anticipating the movement of the target (prospective control) and thus are assumed to rely more on feedback instead of on an internal representation of the movement.