Inspection time and intelligence in 7-yr-old children: A follow-up

Remeasures of inspection time (IT) were obtained from 30 of the 47 children reported in Nettelbeck and Young (Personality and Individual Differences, 10, 605–614, 1989). Ages ranged from 7 yr–0 months to 7–11 and Full Scale IQ (WISC-R) ranged from 93 to 142 (mean = 116.5 SD = 12.2). Correlations between IT and the WISC-R subtests, scales and factors used in the earlier study were generally statistically significant: and similar to those found earlier. The correlation between IT and Full Scale IQ was — 0.49, with those children whose IQs were below the median score of 116 again contributing more to this outcome. Similarly, the IT-IQ correlation was higher among children showing less well-directed attention in the IT task. Once again IT correlated better with Verbal IQ, supporting the hypothesis that IT is better associated with more general intellectual functioning than with specific cognitive abilities. Cross-lagged panel correlations between IT and IQ were —0.40, whether predicting IQ from IT or the reverse. Thus, there was no evidence for a causal relationship between these variables, although both may reflect a common cognitive ability factor.     

A case study of strategic infarct dementia investigated with the cognitive assessment system

Two subjects with brain lesions who were matched on demographic variables were tested on the Cognitive Assessment System (CAS). AK had been dependent on caregivers after a frontal aneurysm 6 years previously despite intact receptive and expressive language skills and motor functions. GM sustained multiple infarcts although he continued to function well on his own. Nonparametric analysis showed that AK's T scores on CAS subtests were lower than that of GM's based on a comparison with a heterogeneous group of brain-damaged patients (p < .003). The CAS's broad range of complexity of items within subtests, apparent sensitivity in differentiating rates of cognitive decline in dementia, and convergence with dementia rating scales suggests that it could be useful for assessment of strategic infarct dementia.     

Early development of subcortical regions involved in non-cued attention switching

This study examined the cognitive and neural development of attention switching using a simple forced-choice attention task and functional magnetic resonance imaging Fourteen children and adults made discriminations among stimuli based on either shape or color. Performance on these trials was compared to performance during blocked trials requiring all color or all shape discriminations. Magnetic resonance echo planar images were acquired during performance of the task. Both children and adults showed robust bilateral activity of the caudate nucleus when switching attention between color and shape discriminations that correlated negatively with mean response latency on these trials. However, neither switching costs nor caudate activity correlated with age, suggesting early development of the underlying neural circuitry involved in switching between salient stimulus sets. Overall, children and adults differed in performance and patterns of brain activity on the task, with adults responding more accurately and faster than children, and recruiting more prefrontal and parietal regions. These results suggest an important role of subcortical regions (i.e. caudate nucleus) in non-cued attention switching, with increasing recruitment of cortical regions with age.     

The impact of stimulants on a clinical measure of attention in children with ADHD.

The effect of stimulant medication on the attentional functioning of 23 children (8-12 yrs) with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) was investigated. Significant main effects of medication and TEA-Ch subtests were found, however there was no significant interaction. Planned contrasts showed that stimulants improved performance on the sustained attention, but not the selective or divided attention, subtests. Similar to previous studies, the results indicate that stimulants improve sustained attention in children with ADHD. Significant effects of stimulants on selective and divided attention, however, were not as apparent. Therefore, care must be taken when using TEA-Ch subtests to assess performance change subsequent to stimulant administration.     

The impact of stimulants on a clinical measure of attention in children with ADHD

The effect of stimulant medication on the attentional functioning of 23 children (8–12 yrs) with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) was investigated. Significant main effects of medication and TEA-Ch subtests were found, however there was no significant interaction. Planned contrasts showed that stimulants improved performance on the sustained attention, but not the selective or divided attention, subtests. Similar to previous studies, the results indicate that stimulants improve sustained attention in children with ADHD. Significant effects of stimulants on selective and divided attention, however, were not as apparent. Therefore, care must be taken when using TEA-Ch subtests to assess performance change subsequent to stimulant administration.     

Neuropsychological impairments on the NEPSY-II among children with FASD

Background: We examined the pattern of neuropsychological impairments of children with FASD (compared to controls) on NEPSY-II measures of attention and executive functioning, language, memory, visuospatial processing, and social perception.

Methods: Participants included 32 children with FASD and 30 typically developing control children, ranging in age from 6 to 16 years. Children were tested on the following subtests of the NEPSY-II: Attention and Executive Functioning (animal sorting, auditory attention/response set, and inhibition), Language (comprehension of instructions and speeded naming), Memory (memory for names/delayed memory for names), Visual-Spatial Processing (arrows), and Social Perception (theory of mind). Groups were compared using MANOVA.

Results: Children with FASD were impaired relative to controls on the following subtests: animal sorting, response set, inhibition (naming and switching conditions), comprehension of instructions, speeded naming, and memory for names total and delayed, but group differences were not significant on auditory attention, inhibition (inhibition condition), arrows, and theory of mind. Among the FASD group, IQ scores were not correlated with performance on the NEPSY-II subtests, and there were no significant differences between those with and without comorbid ADHD.

Conclusions: The NEPSY-II is an effective and useful tool for measuring a variety of neuropsychological impairments among children with FASD. Children with FASD displayed a pattern of results with impairments (relative to controls) on measures of executive functioning (set shifting, concept formation, and inhibition), language, and memory, and relative strengths on measures of basic attention, visual spatial processing, and social perception.     

A Comparison of Children with Epilepsy to an Age- and IQ-Matched Control Group on the Children's Memory Scale

Past research has found that children with epilepsy exhibit decreased memory skills. In addition, some studies have found that children with epilepsy obtain significantly lower IQ scores than controls. In an effort to examine whether children with epilepsy have specific memory weaknesses versus global cognitive difficulties, the present study compared the performance of 62 children (age range = 6–16 years). Thirty-one children with epilepsy were compared to 31 age- and IQ-matched controls on the Children's Memory Scale (CMS) to determine whether differences in memory skills persist when IQ is matched. An independent t-test comparing index and scaled scores was performed. The results indicated that with the exception of the Word Pairs subtest (p < .01), children with epilepsy did not differ significantly on the CMS subtests when IQ was matched. This suggests that list-learning paradigms may be particularly sensitive to memory impairments in children with epilepsy and/or that children with epilepsy have more global cognitive impairments.     

Exposure to severe urban air pollution influences cognitive outcomes, brain volume and systemic inflammation in clinically healthy children

Exposure to severe air pollution produces neuroinflammation and structural brain alterations in children. We tested whether patterns of brain growth, cognitive deficits and white matter hyperintensities (WMH) are associated with exposures to severe air pollution. Baseline and 1 year follow-up measurements of global and regional brain MRI volumes, cognitive abilities (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised, WISC-R), and serum inflammatory mediators were collected in 20 Mexico City (MC) children (10 with white matter hyperintensities, WMH⁺, and 10 without, WMH⁻) and 10 matched controls (CTL) from a low polluted city. There were significant differences in white matter volumes between CTL and MC children - both WMH⁺ and WMH⁻ - in right parietal and bilateral temporal areas. Both WMH⁻ and WMH⁺ MC children showed progressive deficits, compared to CTL children, on the WISC-R Vocabulary and Digit Span subtests. The cognitive deficits in highly exposed children match the localization of the volumetric differences detected over the 1 year follow-up, since the deficits observed are consistent with impairment of parietal and temporal lobe functions. Regardless of the presence of prefrontal WMH, Mexico City children performed more poorly across a variety of cognitive tests, compared to CTL children, thus WMH⁺ is likely only partially identifying underlying white matter pathology. Together these findings reveal that exposure to air pollution may perturb the trajectory of cerebral development and result in cognitive deficits during childhood.     

Attention deficits in children with sickle cell disease

Previous research has suggested that children with sickle cell disease may exhibit cognitive deficits even in the absence of direct cerebrovascular involvement (stroke). This study was designed to assess specific attentional deficits in children with sickle cell disease. 12 children with sickle cell disease (Hb SS) with a prior history of stroke, 14 children with sickle cell disease (Hb SS) without evidence of stroke, and 13 similar aged siblings (Hb AA or Hb AS) were compared on measures of attention, intellectual functioning, achievement, and adaptive functioning. Significant differences were found between children with sickle cell disease (with or without stroke) and healthy controls on a timed test of visual scanning, the Coding subtest of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised, and subtests of Reading, Arithmetic, and Spelling from the Wide Range Achievement Test-Revised. The differences between children with sickle cell disease and their healthy siblings appear to be the result of strokes rather than sickle cell disease itself as children with sickle cell disease without strokes did not significantly differ from controls. Implications for the effects of sickle cell disease and stroke on academic performance are discussed.     

Identifying similarities in cognitive subtest functional requirements: An empirical approach

In the cognitive test interpretation literature, a Rational/Intuitive, Indirect Empirical, or Combined approach is typically used to construct conceptual taxonomies of the functional (behavioral) similarities between subtests. To address shortcomings of these approaches, the functional requirements for 49 subtests from six individually administered scales of cognitive ability (WISC-IV, WPPSI-III, SB-V, WJ-III, CAS, and UNIT) were typed on index cards. Forty-eight (48) in-service and/or pre-service school psychologists were asked to sort the cards into two, three, five, or eight functionally similar piles. A multidimensional scaling analysis was performed on a 49 × 49 matrix of similarity scores collapsed across all 48 subjects. Three dimensions were extracted from the data: Reproduction of Stimuli Sequences versus Picture Viewing (Dimension 1), Timed Speed versus Untimed Power (Dimension 2), and Verbal versus Performance (Dimension 3). A hierarchical clustering procedure was then applied to the matrix data, and results were compared to previous categorization schemes identified in the test interpretation literature.     

Effects of Bilingual Language Use and Language Proficiency on 24-month-olds’ Cognitive Control

ABSTRACT

Although a bilingual advantage has been reported for various measures of cognitive control, most previous studies have looked at a limited range of cognitive control measures. Furthermore, they typically leave unaddressed whether positive effects of bilingualism hold for all bilinguals or whether these are modulated by differences in bilingual language use and proficiency of children and their parents. This study reports on tasks of selective attention and inhibitory control from 24-month-old bilinguals (n = 37) and monolinguals (n = 58). Their parents completed a Dutch vocabulary checklist assessing receptive and productive vocabulary as well as questionnaires on children’s attentional focusing, attention shifting and inhibitory control, and language background. Linear mixed-effect regressions showed no differences on cognitive control between the monolinguals and bilingual groups. However, analyses taking into account differences in children’s bilingual language use and proficiency and of their parents revealed a more nuanced picture. Specifically, children’s degree of balanced language usage predicted parent-rated cognitive control. Furthermore, bilingual toddlers who had parents were low proficient in one of the home languages showed significantly better performance on a selective attention task than toddlers whose parents were both proficient in both home languages. These findings suggest that both children’s active usage of two languages and their experience with switching depending on their interlocutor are related to cognitive control performance in young bilingual children. As such, they add to a growing body of evidence that the bilingual advantage in cognitive control is tied to specific conditions of bilingualism, already at a young age.     

Word Memory Test Performance in Children

One-hundred and thirty-five children between the ages of 7 and 18 years were evaluated clinically. Their diagnoses included Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) or Effects, Schizophrenia, Bipolar Mood Disorder, various neurological diseases, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Conduct Disorder, Oppositional-Defiant Disorder and learning disabilities. As part of a comprehensive neuropsychological assessment, the children were given the Word Memory Test (WMT; Green, Allen, & Astner, 1996; Green & Astner, 1995), containing various subtests which measure, respectively, effort and verbal memory. Although age and verbal intelligence are known to affect scores on most ability tests, they were not found to be significant determinants of WMT effort scores. Younger children did not score any lower on the effort subtests than older children. The children scored as well as a group of parents seeking custody of their children and they scored higher than adult patients with mild head injuries. The computerized WMT requires some basic reading skills and some children with lower than a grade 3 reading level scored at a relatively low level on the effort subtests. The current data suggest that most children with at least a grade 3 reading level can pass the WMT using the adult criteria. It is concluded that the WMT is potentially useful in the evaluation of effort during pediatric neuropsychological evaluations. Further research is needed to replicate these findings and to develop child norms for the memory subtests.     

L’utilisation précoce des écrans est-elle néfaste ? Une première réponse avec la cohorte Elfe

In France, a recent well-documented book by Desmurget (2019) severely condemned all use of screen by preschoolers. Desmurget speaks from a danger of decerebration leading to dumbass children. However, a critical analysis of his argumentation suggests that such a rejection could be an overly radical position. The French longitudinal study, Elfe, was initiated in 2011 on more than 18,000 newborns. Follow-up was intensive in the infancy and pre-school periods, including a telephone interview of the mother (or, if not available, the father) at age 3.5 years. In this interview, the mothers answered many questions about the use of screens (here limited to tablets, computers, and smartphones) by their children. The children were then tested in 2016, when they were in the nursery school (4- to 5-year-olds, 57 months in mean), with a large cognitive test, involving both literacy (n = 35) and numeracy (n = 24) items, and a visual attention test, the Teddy bears cancellation test. In the latter test, the participant is asked to cross out, with the pencil in his/her dominant hand, all the teddy bears (n = 15) distributed on the page among 60 distractors in one minute of time. Moreover, the teachers were asked to rate the children's competence in cognitive (language, maths, sciences) and non-cognitive (physical or musical activities) domains and their social behaviors (helping, sharing, and attention to others) on a 3 or 5-items Likert-scale. Regression analysis of the total cognitive test score on the screen use, adjusted for age, gender, mother's study level, family's income, and number of siblings, showed an association between computer use and cognitive performance in nursery school. Correlations between screen use and, respectively, the cognitive test score, the visual attention test, the teachers’ rating about the performance or behavior of their students was never significantly negative. In fact, some were even significantly positive, albeit low and non-conclusive due to the limitations of the study. The results, both of the regression and correlational analyses, are consistent with our suggestion that Desmurget's position is overly radical but do not exclude that, in the long term, the early use of screen can be the basis of a future addiction.     

Word memory test performance in children.

One-hundred and thirty-five children between the ages of 7 and 18 years were evaluated clinically. Their diagnoses included Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) or Effects, Schizophrenia, Bipolar Mood Disorder, various neurological diseases, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Conduct Disorder, Oppositional-Defiant Disorder and learning disabilities. As part of a comprehensive neuropsychological assessment, the children were given the Word Memory Test (WMT; Green, Allen, & Astner, 1996; Green & Astner, 1995), containing various subtests which measure, respectively, effort and verbal memory. Although age and verbal intelligence are known to affect scores on most ability tests, they were not found to be significant determinants of WMT effort scores. Younger children did not score any lower on the effort subtests than older children. The children scored as well as a group of parents seeking custody of their children and they scored higher than adult patients with mild head injuries. The computerized WMT requires some basic reading skills and some children with lower than a grade 3 reading level scored at a relatively low level on the effort subtests. The current data suggest that most children with at least a grade 3 reading level can pass the WMT using the adult criteria. It is concluded that the WMT is potentially useful in the evaluation of effort during pediatric neuropsychological evaluations. Further research is needed to replicate these findings and to develop child norms for the memory subtests.     

Holding multiple category representations: The role of age,theory of mind,and rule switching in children’s developing cross-classification abilities

Cross-classification, the ability to categorize multifaceted entities in many ways, is a remarkable cognitive milestone for children. Past work has focused primarily on documenting the timeline for when children reach cross-classification competence. However, it is not well understood what cognitive factors underpin children’s improvements. The current study aimed to examine the contributions of age, theory of mind, and rule switching to children’s cross-classification development. We tested 3- to 5-year-old children (N = 75) using a cross-classification task, the Theory of Mind Task Battery, and the Three-Dimensional Change Card Sort test. The results revealed that age and theory of mind predict children’s cross-classification over and above the effects of rule switching. The results also revealed that advanced-level theory of mind reasoning is a particularly strong predictor of cross-classification development. These findings increase understanding of cross-classification within children’s broader cognitive development.     

Everyday cognitive failures and memory problems in Parkinson's patients without dementia

There is growing evidence that Parkinson’s disease patients without dementia exhibit cognitive deficits in some executive, memory and selective attention tasks. However, the impact of these deficits on their everyday cognitive functioning remains largely unknown. This issue was explored using self-report questionnaires. Twenty-four Parkinson’s patients and 24 age-matched controls rated how frequently they make particular cognitive errors, such as forgetting what they were about to say. In addition, a partner or significant other also rated each participant’s propensity for making cognitive errors. Rather than simply rating themselves as making more of all types of errors, these results indicate that PD patients make more of specific types of error. Further analysis suggests that some of these errors are related to attentional processes (being more distractible) whereas others are related to retrieval processes (being unable to recall important details from the previous day).     

Monitoring the Changing Status of Semantic Memory in Alzheimer's Disease: An Evaluation of Several Process Measures

The deficits in generating correct words on verbal fluency tasks exhibited by patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) are accompanied by fewer switching responses, smaller phonemic and semantic cluster sizes, and greater than normal percentages of errors and category labels. On category fluency tasks, patients generate a greater proportion of words that are prototypical of their semantic class. To determine whether any of these supplementary measures of verbal fluency performance might be useful in revealing processes involved in the decline of semantic memory in AD, we studied 219 patients with AD and 115 elderly control participants longitudinally. Previously reported group differences between patients and controls were replicated, but changes in average cluster size, error rates, and prototypicality were not related to changes in overall severity of dementia and test-retest stability was only modest. The change in the percentage of labels generated on the Supermarket task was related to changes in dementia severity, but test-retest stability on this measure was quite low. All of these process measures appear to reflect only the current status of the patient's attention to the task and access to semantic knowledge, but they do not forecast future performance. The numbers of switching responses on the fluency tasks were sensitive to differences between clinically deteriorated and clinically stable patients and showed fairly high test-retest stability. However, the number of switching responses is so highly correlated with the number of correct words that it contributes little to the understanding of the processes involved in the progressive decline in performance on fluency tasks by patients with AD.     

Receptive vocabulary and semantic knowledge in children with SLI and children with Down syndrome

Receptive vocabulary and associated semantic knowledge were compared within and between groups of children with specific language impairment (SLI), children with Down syndrome (DS), and typically developing children. To overcome the potential confounding effects of speech or language difficulties on verbal tests of semantic knowledge, a novel task was devised based on picture-based semantic association tests used to assess adult patients with semantic dementia. Receptive vocabulary, measured by word-picture matching, of children with SLI was weak relative to chronological age and to nonverbal mental age but their semantic knowledge, probed across the same lexical items, did not differ significantly from that of vocabulary-matched typically developing children. By contrast, although receptive vocabulary of children with DS was a relative strength compared to nonverbal cognitive abilities (p < .0001), DS was associated with a significant deficit in semantic knowledge (p < .0001) indicative of dissociation between word-picture matching vocabulary and depth of semantic knowledge. Overall, these data challenge the integrity of semantic-conceptual development in DS and imply that contemporary theories of semantic cognition should also seek to incorporate evidence from atypical conceptual development.     

学前教育年限与母亲受教育水平对农村一年级 小学生学校适应的影响

研究采用同伴提名法、教师和家长报告法,对农村135名一年级小学生进行了为期一年的追踪调查,在此基础上,考察了学前教育年限、母亲受教育水平与学校适应之间的关系。结果表明:(1)学前教育年限越长,小学生越多地表现出积极社会行为,但这种优势仅体现在小学入学初期;(2)母亲受教育水平越低,小学生越多地表现出敏感退缩行为和受拒绝同伴关系;(3)对于母亲受教育水平较低的小学生,学前教育年限越长,其攻击冒犯行为越多;而对于母亲受教育水平较高的小学生,学前教育年限越长,其攻击冒犯行为越少。可见,母亲受教育水平与学前教育年限相互作用,共同影响儿童发展结果,且母亲受教育水平的影响作用更为明显。     

Is the Flynn effect on g?: A meta-analysis

Black/White differences in mean IQ have been clearly shown to strongly correlate with g loadings, so large group differences on subtests of high cognitive complexity and small group differences on subtests of low cognitive complexity. IQ scores have been increasing over the last half century, a phenomenon known as the Flynn effect. Flynn effect gains are predominantly driven by environmental factors. Might these factors also be responsible for group differences in intelligence? The empirical studies on whether the pattern of Flynn effect gains is the same as the pattern of group differences yield conflicting findings. A psychometric meta-analysis on all studies with seven or more subtests reporting correlations between g loadings and standardized score gains was carried out, based on 5 papers, yielding 11 data points (total N = 16,663). It yielded a true correlation of − .38, and none of the variance between the studies could be attributed to moderators. It appears that the Flynn effect and group differences have different causes. Suggestions for future research are discussed.