Integrating domain-general and domain-specific developmental processes: Cross-syndrome, cross-domain dynamics

© Oxford University Press, 2012. All rights reserved. This chapter asks novel questions of old and new data, aiming to elucidate the relationships between attention, language, and number early in the development of people with Williams syndrome (WS). In order to understand better whether these cross-domain relations are specific to WS, it raises these questions with respect to infants with WS, and compares them with infants with Down syndrome (DS) and with typically developing (TD) children. It also asks how attentional processes relate to precursors of literacy and numeracy in older children with WS or DS and in TD children, to assess potentially changing relationships across domain-general and domain-specific processes over developmental time. In addition, it contrasts the attentional profile of WS to that of another neurodevelopmental disorder of known genetic origin, fragile X syndrome, to illustrate insights that can be gained from cross-syndrome comparisons.