Played Out? Passive Behavior by Children With Down Syndrome During Unstructured Play

Young children with Down syndrome are characterized as both cognitively and behaviorally passive. Parents and educators often view passive behavior as a failure to initiate or to sustain involvement. As a result, they often interrupt such behaviors and redirect the child's activity. An opportunity for the child to express initiative might be lost. What would happen if there were no adult interruptions? This study investigates the duration, frequency, and trajectory of passive behavior in a sample of 14 children with Down syndrome and 14 typically developing children, matched for mental age, race, and gender, over a 47-minute independent play session. Passive episodes were coded for point of occurrence in the play session. In our sample, children with Down syndrome exhibited more time in passive behavior than their typically developing counterparts did. For some children with Down syndrome, passivity increased commensurate with time spent in the play session. Implications from these findings for both research and practice are given.