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Meet Children and Adults With Williams Syndrome

What is the meaning of Williams syndrome is a rare genetic condition - very rare, in fact, that few people ever hear about it. Of the approximately 7,500 newborns, only one will have them. But that one, have you ever met him, probably will have the personality of ebullience and warmth unforgettable. This is the kind of personality seen only occasionally outside the world of Williams Syndrome.
When the 20/20 's Chris Cuomo attend a camp for children with Williams he was surrounded by hugs and slaps on the back. Then came the barrage of questions. "What's your favorite color?" "Where do you live?" "Have you met Barney the Dinosaur?"
Children with Williams also often identified by a variety of facial characteristics, from a small, pointed teeth, for nasal inverted, with a swelling under their eyes. But the camp is a place where everyone wants to be your friend regardless of who you are or what you look like.
"Small babies will come up to you, they will stare into your face, and it will be difficult to actually break away from that look," said Helen Tager-Flusberg the lab at Boston University studying social behavior of children with Williams. "When they're four or five ... whether they know you or not, in about five minutes you are just their friends."
One interesting study by researchers in Europe found that children with Williams showed no racial bias whatsoever. While the children, even babies prefer people of their own race, to trace the neural pathways that racial bias is something missing in children with Williams.


What Causes Williams Syndrome?
Williams Syndrome is the caused by the deletion of roughly 25 genes on chromosome 7. The deletion cans occur randomly During the production of a sperm or egg cell. Though there are 20.000 to 25.000 genes in the human genome, even the loss of just 25 genes cans have profound effects on a person's physical, behavioral and cognitive make-up.
Why the deletion of genes causes Such friendliness and social disinhibition is not well understood. The development of our Personalities is a complex social relationship Between our environment and our genes - both present and notes.
If you think most children - with or without Williams - are warm and open, you'd be wrong. Tager-Flusberg's research team has Recorded hours of video comparing children with Williams to typically-developing children.
In one experiment to test empathy, the adult experimenter Bangs her knee on a table and expresses a great deal of pain. In many runs the lab Recorded, the typically-developing child just watched and expressed no empathy or concern. But children with Williams Often Went right over to the experimenter to rub her knee and ask, "What's wrong?"
Such empathy comes with a lack of fear. Watching a recording of a typically-developing child reacting to a hairy, moving, toy spider, Tager-Flusberg noted, not surprisingly, "She does not Want To approach it ... and does not have any inclination to go near to and touch it. "
What do most children with Williams syndrome presented Pls do with the creepy spider? They pet it.
But this lack of fear has a scary side, too. In another experiment, Tager-Flusberg has a stranger enter a room. And not just any stranger, but one wearing a baseball cap and dark sunglasses. As Would you guess, children without Williams Avoid the stranger like the plague. Children with Williams, however, Often engage the stranger in conversation, and in one case We saw a child even Offered a toy for the stranger to play with.
Such social disinhibition and innocence cans have real-life consequences, and That extends to Adults with Williams Syndrome.
Kelley Martin, 34, of Westwood, NJ, has Williams Syndrome, she was bullied by a so-called friend into paying for that friend's expenses. Kelley's mother, Anne, realized what was happening $ 1.500 later.
"It's very scary," Anne Martin toll 20/20. "Because I know what Happens cans to her if there's nobody watching for her."

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