In skill acquisition, downstream effects refer to:

• A. The failure to acquire a cognitive skill at the right time leading to later problems
• B. Immediate recovery from impairment
• C. Enhanced performance in unrelated domains
• D. No effect on future development

Answer: (A)

Downstream effects describe how missing a skill at the expected time can create a chain of challenges that emerge later in development. The best choice captures this idea by pointing to the failure to acquire a cognitive skill at the right time, which then leads to problems down the line. For example, if phonemic awareness isn’t mastered when beginning to learn reading, decoding can suffer, and this can cascade into weaker reading comprehension and later academic struggles. Immediate recovery from impairment belongs to a different pattern where function improves right away, while enhanced performance in unrelated domains or no effect on future development don’t reflect the cascading impact over time that downstream effects describe.