Concurrent Validity of the Mayes Motor-Free Compilation (MMFC) for Assessing Mental Ability in Children with Physical Impairments

This study investigated the concurrent validity of the Mayes Motor-Free Compilation (MMFC) using the Mental Scale of the Bayley Scales of Infant Development-Second Edition (BSID-II) as the criterion variable with 50 typically-developing preschool-aged children. The MMFC is an individually-administered instrument designed to assess the mental ability of young children with motor disabilities. The results indicated that the MMFC and BSID-II Mental Scale scores were significantly and positively correlated. In addition, 94% of the children's MMFC mental age scores fell within the confidence bands constructed around their BSID-II developmental age scores. These results lend preliminary support to the validity of the MMFC. The paper concludes with a discussion of interpretation issues as well as areas for future research.     

Impaired performance of children with dyslexia on a range of cerebellar tasks

It is now thought that the cerebellum is involved in the acquisition of “language dexterity” in addition to its established role in motor skill acquisition and execution. Mild cerebellar impairment, therefore, provides a possible explanation of a range of problems shown by children with dyslexia. The authors have established suggestive evidence in support of this hypothesis in tests of balance and of time estimation. In a further test of the hypothesis, a battery of clinical tests for cerebellar impairment, including tests of muscle tone and of coordination, was administered to matched groups of children with dyslexia and control children aged 10, 14, and 18 years (55 subjects in all). The children with dyslexia showed highly significant impairments on all the cerebellar tests, and significant impairment compared even with reading age controls on 11 of the 14 tasks. Deficits on the majority of tests were among the largest found in our research program. The findings, therefore, provide further intriguing evidence of cerebellar impairment in dyslexia. We speculate that the well-established phonological deficits in dyslexia may arise initially from inefficient articulatory control attributable to cerebellar impairment.     

重视0-3岁婴儿的心理保健 促进儿童健康成长

0-3岁是人生身心发育的关键期,家长、父母在重视对孩子身体保健的同时,也要重视对孩子的心理保健。心理保健可以从几个方面入手:满足孩子各种合理的需求,培养儿童积极的情绪;培养孩子良好的习惯和生活自理能力;提供丰富、适宜的环境刺激,发展儿童的动作能力和语言能力;客观对待孩子的过失和错误。     

The Role of Age and Verbal Ability in the Theory of Mind Task Performance of Subjects with Autism

A number of studies have reported that most children with autism fail theory of mind tasks. It is unclear why certain children with autism pass such tests and what might be different about these subjects. In the present study, the role of age and verbal ability in theory of mind task performance was explored. Data were pooled from 70 autistic, 34 mentally handicapped, and 70 normal young subjects, previously tested for a number of different studies. The analysis suggested that children with autism required far higher verbal mental age to pass false belief tasks than did other subjects. While normally developing children had a 50% probability of passing both tasks at the verbal mental age of 4 years, autistic subjects took more than twice as long to reach this probability of success (at the advanced verbal mental age of 9-2). Possible causal relations between verbal ability and the ability to represent mental states are discussed.     

Detection of deficits in temporal pattern discrimination using the seashore rhythm test in young children with reading impairments

A deficiency in temporal pattern discrimination frequently is a distinguishing characteristic of children with dyslexia or learning disabilities (LD). We studied the feasibility of using the Seashore Rhythm Test, a subtest of the Halstead-Reitan neurological assessment battery (Halstead, 1947), with young children to discriminate children with reading impairments from age-matched controls reading at a normal level, in an effort to develop tools to determine readiness to read in young school-age children. Major considerations in test selection were ease of administration and wide use and acceptance. Fifty-nine children in Grades 1 through 3 were administered a battery of tests during the last 3 weeks of the school year by blinded experimenters. Tests administered included the Seashore Rhythm Test, Benton Visual Retention Test, Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, Blau Torque Test, and the Rod and Frame Test. Children with reading impairments (n = 24) in all age groups were found to exhibit a marked deficit in the ability to discriminate patterned pairs of tones on the Seashore Rhythm Test compared to controls (n = 26). These children also exhibited deficits in right-left orientation, as indicated by their poor performance on the Blau Torque Test. Performance on the Seashore and the Blau by a group of children diagnosed as learning disabled (n = 9) was similar to the group with reading impairments. No significant differences between controls and children with reading impairments or LD were observed in Rod and Frame or Benton performance. The results suggest that the Seashore Rhythm Test may prove to be a useful tool to detect young children who will later show signs of reading impairment.     

Use of the Bayley Scales to characterize abilities of premature infants

The Bayley Scales of Infant Development were administered to 92 white, middle-class infants, half of them premature and half full-term, at 1 year of age from term to determine whether this instrument is useful in characterizing the abilities of premature infants. Although both full-term and premature infants achieved mental and motor development scores within the average range, full-term infants attained significantly higher scores on both the Mental and Motor Scales. Both groups scored significantly lower on motor than mental functioning; however, the difference was significantly greater for premature infants. As a group, premature infants also evidenced greater variability in their performance on both the Mental and Motor Scales, and they showed greater intra-individual variability in performance of motor ability. Furthermore, premature infants were less likely to succeed on items testing eye-hand coordination, imitation, and vocalization. Preselected perinatal risk variables accounted for a significant amount of variance in both mental and motor ability of premature infants.     

A longitudinal analysis of sex differences in math and spatial skills in primary school age children

We report on a longitudinal study designed to assess possible sex differences in math achievement, math ability, and math-related tasks during the primary school age years. Participants included over 200 children from one public school district. Annual assessments included measures of math ability, math calculation achievement scores, rapid naming and decoding tasks, visual perception tests, visual motor tasks, and reading skills. During select years of the study we also administered tests of counting and math facts skills. We examined whether girls or boys were overrepresented among the bottom or top performers on any of these tasks, relative to their peers, and whether growth rates or predictors of math-related skills differed for boys and girls. Our findings support the notion that sex differences in math are minimal or nonexistent on standardized psychometric tests routinely given in assessments of primary school age children. There was no persistent finding suggesting a male or female advantage in math performance overall, during any single year of the study, or in any one area of math or spatial skills. Growth rates for all skills, and early correlates of later math performance, were comparable for boys and girls. The findings fail to support either persistent or emerging sex differences on non-specialized math ability measures during the primary school age years.     

Physical Exercise During the Morning School‐Break Improves Basic Cognitive Functions

Physical activity has not only been associated with increased physical and mental health, but also with beneficial effects on various cognitive and brain functions. This study investigated the effects of a motor and coordination oriented exercise intervention on academic achievements, attention/concentration ability, and on different facets of creative potential in a sample of school‐aged children between 11 and 14 years. The intervention was conducted during the morning school‐break over a time period of 4 weeks (5 units per week). The intervention was associated with beneficial effects on attention/concentration ability, basic arithmetic competence, and the fluency facet of creative potential. The finding that regular physical exercise during the morning break improves some basic academic and cognitive functions may motivate efforts to implement physical activity programs as promising and effective tools in the everyday school‐routine of the children to stimulate basic neurocognitive functions.     

分析测验和综合测验的编制

根据有关分析和综合的概念理论以及儿童的心理年龄特点,以图形为材料,编制了“分析测验和综合测验”。经测试结果表明,两个测验均有较好的质量参数,可作为6—12岁儿童分析能力和综合能力的测量工具。     

儿童动作协调能力的内涵、影响因素及其培养策略

儿童动作协调能力的发展对儿童的身心健康成长具有重要的意义,儿童的遗传素质和成熟水平是儿童动作协调能力发展的基础,后天培养方式对儿童动作协调能力的发展也会产生重要的影响.为促进儿童动作协调能力的健康顺利发展,教师要根据运动规律和儿童的身心发展特点,采取多种运动形式对儿童动作协调能力进行训练.     

How Can Released State Test Items Support Interim Assessment Purposes in an Educational Crisis?

State testing programs regularly release previously administered test items to the public. We provide an open-source recipe for state, district, and school assessment coordinators to combine these items flexibly to produce scores linked to established state score scales. These would enable estimation of student score distributions and achievement levels. We discuss how educators can use resulting scores to estimate achievement distributions at the classroom and school level. We emphasize that any use of such tests should be tertiary, with no stakes for students, educators, and schools, particularly in the context of a crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic. These tests and their results should also be lower in priority than assessments of physical, mental, and social–emotional health, and lower in priority than classroom and district assessments that may already be in place. We encourage state testing programs to release all the ingredients for this recipe to support low-stakes, aggregate-level assessments. This is particularly urgent during a crisis where scores may be declining and gaps increasing at unknown rates.     

How strong and weak readers perform on the Developmental Eye Movement test (DEM): norms for Latvian school-aged children

The aim of our study was to determine DEM test performance norms for school-aged children in Latvia, assess how DEM test results correlate with children’s reading rates, compare test performance between strong and weak readers. A modified DEM test and a newly developed reading test were administered to 1487 children during a screening survey. Our study provides norms for adjusted DEM scores for children from 7 to 18 years of age. A high correlation exists between a child’s reading rate and her DEM speed scores for both parts of the test. Weak readers performed significantly more slowly on the DEM test than strong readers. Overall, 6 % of the subject population scored 1 standard deviation below the mean value on both the DEM and reading tests. We conclude that these individuals may be at a higher risk for developing reading impairments.     

Early childhood education of children with specific language impairments

Early intervention for children with specific language impairment by teachers with experience in supporting their needs is critical to language acquisition. In Western Australia this small number of children are catered for in designated settings with specialised teachers. The length of time that these children are able to access intensive instruction may be shortening and therefore the potential effect on their learning is crucial. Teachers from five Language Development Centres were asked to respond to a range of issues associated with these children's ability to cope with the proposed early re-entry into the mainstream classroom. A total of 120 responses were received from teachers, speech therapists and educational assistants who highlighted the specialist skill set required to teach students with specific language impairments. Discussion focuses on the perceived ability of mainstream teachers to provide appropriate support for children with specific language impairments in the early years.     

Executive functions and pragmatics in children with high-functioning autism

Children with deficits in executive functions (EFs) and impairments in pragmatic language have a range of cognitive and language difficulties that affect their literacy and educational achievements. As deficits in EFs and pragmatic impairments are characteristics of autism spectrum disorders, this study examined the associations between EFs and pragmatic skills in children with high-functioning autism (HFA). Fifteen children with HFA (5–9 years; M?=?7.44, SD 1.21), matched to 15 typically developing peers on age, gender, and non-verbal intelligence participated in the study. Children completed a pragmatic language assessment protocol, and a rating scale of EFs was administered to parents. Our results point to two main findings: children with HFA presented pragmatic difficulties and EFs impairments when compared with typically developing peers; and, as shown by a significant indirect effect of group on pragmatics via EFs, the poor pragmatics skills of HFA children were associated with their EFs difficulties. These findings may be of clinical relevance for children with pragmatic impairments, such as autism spectrum disorders. Future studies are crucial to further investigate the relationship between impaired pragmatics and EFs.

     

Effects of Differentially Time-Consuming Tests on Computer-Adaptive Test Scores

Time limits on some computer-adaptive tests (CATs) are such that many examinees have difficulty finishing, and some examinees may be administered tests with more time-consuming items than others. Results from over 100,000 examinees suggested that about half of the examinees must guess on the final six questions of the analytical section of the Graduate Record Examination if they were to finish before time expires. At the higher-ability levels, even more guessing was required because the questions administered to higher-ability examinees were typically more time consuming. Because the scoring model is not designed to cope with extended strings of guesses, substantial errors in ability estimates can be introduced when CATs have strict time limits. Furthermore, examinees who are administered tests with a disproportionate number of time-consuming items appear to get lower scores than examinees of comparable ability who are administered tests containing items that can be answered more quickly, though the issue is very complex because of the relationship of time and difficulty, and the multidimensionality of the test.     

The Use of Biological Measures to Estimate Behavioral Intelligence

Little attention has been paid to biological or physiological correlates of mental ability in the development of theories or tests of intelligence. A number of such biological correlates exist, however; some showing a pronounced relationship with performance on standard intelligence tests. Given the magnitude of the correlations that exist between behavioral intelligence and such measures as averaged evoked potentials, nerve conduction velocity, and cerebral glucose metabolic rate, it is proposed that an appropriately weighted combination of these and other physiological processes could provide a reliable, culture-fair estimate of intelligence that could be administered in the same manner to persons of almost any age or level of ability. Biological approaches to the measurement of intelligence may not replace traditional assessments, but the information that they can provide deserves greater attention than typically has been the case.     

Early identification of dyslexia: Evidence from a follow-up study of speech-language impaired children

A group of speech-language impaired children was administered a battery of standardized language tests and measures of phonological processing in kindergarten. Performance on these language measures was then compared to reading ability in first grade. Results indicated that children with semantic-syntactic language deficits had more difficulties in reading than did children with primarily speech articulation impairments. In addition, phonological processing measures were found to be good predictors of reading achievement. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for the early identification of developmental dyslexia. This research was supported by a grant from the Department of Education (HO24U8001).     

Studies of visual information processing in schizophrenic children

11 children meeting DSM III criteria for schizophrenia (mean age approximately 12 years), a group of normal children matched in mean mental age to the schizophrenic children, and a group of younger normal children (mean age 6.6 years) were administered a series of visual information-processing tasks in order to isolate core information-processing impairments in childhood onset schizophrenia. In Experiment 1, the schizophrenic children showed impairment relative to the MA-matched normals and performed at the level of the younger normal children on a forced-choice partial-report version of the span-of-apprehension task. Previous research has shown that this task is sensitive to dysfunction in both actively and partially recovered schizophrenic adults as well as a subset of foster children at risk for schizophrenia. Experiment 2 delimited the source of the information-processing impairment in schizophrenic children by ruling out a number of possible causes of impairment and suggesting that schizophrenic children use the same information-acquisition strategies as MA-matched children but less efficiently. Experiment 3 revealed that, consistent with the previous research, the schizophrenic children were comparable with the MA-matched controls on a full-report span-of-apprehension task that placed heavy demands on iconic and short-term memory. Both the schizophrenic and MA-matched normals performed significantly better than the younger normal children. Taken collectively, the results of the three experiments suggest that all groups of children engaged in a serial information-processing strategy while performing on the partial-report version of the span-of-apprehension task. The differential impairment of the schizophrenic children on the partial-report versions but not the full-report version of the span-of-apprehension task seems to reflect inefficiencies in controlled attentional processes that normally develop during middle childhood.     

Maternal psychological distress during pregnancy in relation to child development at age two

Concern exists that a constellation of negative maternal emotions during pregnancy generates persistent negative consequences for child development. Maternal reports of anxiety, pregnancy-specific and nonspecific stress, and depressive symptoms were collected during mid-pregnancy and at 6 weeks and 24 months after birth in a sample of healthy women with low risk pregnancies. Developmental assessment and cardiac vagal tone monitoring were administered to 94 children at age 2. Higher levels of prenatal anxiety, nonspecific stress, and depressive symptoms were associated with more advanced motor development in children after postnatal control for each psychological measure; anxiety and depression were also significantly and positively associated with mental development. Mild to moderate levels of psychological distress may enhance fetal maturation in healthy populations.