We investigated the role of executive and spatial representational processes in impaired performance of block construction tasks by children with Williams syndrome (WS), a rare genetic defect that results in severely impaired spatial cognition. In Experiment 1, we examined performance in two kinds of block construction tasks, Simple Puzzles, in which block faces contained a single color, and Complex, in which some block faces contained an arrangement of two colors. WS and control children were comparable in their ability to solve simple puzzles, and showed similar eye-fixation patterns, suggesting that basic executive processes were intact. However, WS children were severely impaired in their ability to solve complex puzzles. In these puzzles, WS children fixated the complex puzzle models and checked their partial solutions less often than normal children, but they were comparable in their ability to detect errors in their copies and almost exclusively made repairs to copies that were, in fact, incorrect. We conjecture that the abnormal fixation patterns were a consequence of impoverished spatial representations, rather than a cause of it. This conjecture was tested in Experiment 2, where we examined children's capacity to match and place individual blocks without engaging the complex executive processes required to carry out a complete puzzle solution. We found serious deficiency among WS children in both aspects of spatial representation. Moreover, estimates of the errors in representing the identity and location of model blocks derived from Experiment 2 provided a good account of the observed errors in the block construction task of Experiment 1.

中文翻译：

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空间结构的空间分解：来自威廉姆斯综合征儿童眼睛注视的证据

我们调查了执行和空间表征过程在威廉姆斯综合征 (WS) 儿童的块构建任务表现受损中的作用，这是一种导致空间认知严重受损的罕见遗传缺陷。在实验 1 中，我们检查了两种积木构建任务的性能：简单拼图（其中积木面包含单一颜色）和复杂拼图（其中一些积木面包含两种颜色的排列）。WS 和对照组儿童在解决简单谜题的能力方面相当，并且表现出相似的注视模式，表明基本的执行过程是完整的。然而，WS 儿童解决复杂谜题的能力严重受损。在这些谜题中，WS 儿童专注于复杂的拼图模型并检查他们的部分解决方案的频率低于正常儿童，但他们检测副本中错误的能力相当，并且几乎只对实际上不正确的副本进行修复。我们推测异常的注视模式是缺乏空间表征的结果，而不是其原因。这一猜想在实验 2 中得到检验，我们在实验 2 中检验了儿童匹配和放置单个块的能力，而无需参与执行完整拼图解决方案所需的复杂执行过程。我们发现 WS 儿童在空间表征的两个方面都存在严重缺陷。而且，