Why do people with Down Syndrome have that same “look” to them?
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I won’t bore you with the specifics regarding aetiology, but essentially Down’s is due to a an extra chromosome leading to significant neural and physical defects, one of which is their ‘same look’ as you term it.
Those with Down’s appear to have a significant degree of deficiency in midfacial area, mandibular area, and endocranial area1, perhaps due to muscular atrophy caused by the disease.
Otherwise, why they look similar is down to human conditioning. In simple terms, we are very adept at noticing facial differences in our own race, however often, we look at other races, black, asian etc. and cannot differentiate as well between the faces2. This is what occurs with those with Down’s syndrome; we see a similar trait and assume they all ‘look the same’. This is obviously not the case as those with Down’s syndrome often have very different features, but we can’t see past this human trait of recognising those similar to us, far better.
TL:DR – Down’s syndrome sufferers look the same as each other, much the same as other races often look similar as a group, due to a human conditioning effect called the ‘Other Race Effect’^3.
As far as my own research can ^tell!
Fink GB, Madaus WK, Walker GF. A quantitative study of the face in Down’s syndrome. Am J Orthod. 1975;67(5):540-53.
Bar-haim Y, Saidel T, Yovel G. The role of skin colour in face recognition. Perception. 2009;38(1):145-8.
Anzures G, Kelly DJ, Pascalis O, et al. Own- and Other-Race Face Identity Recognition in Children: The Effects of Pose and Feature Composition. Dev Psychol. 2013;
Courtesy of /u/jazzamk in 2015
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