Neuropsychological and behavioral assessment of ADHD in seven- to twelve-year-old children: a discriminant analysis

We hypothesized that children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) would underperform on neuropsychological tests that are sensitive to executive function impairments. We further proposed that a linear discriminant analysis using behavioral and neuropsychological variables as dependent variables would pinpoint the capability of behavioral questionnaires and neuropsychological tests to predict the correct classification of ADHD and control children. We designed a transversal study with 62 seven- to twelve-year-old children with ADHD and 62 Full Scale IQ-matched controls using two behavioral scales and 13 neuropsychological tests. Using analysis of variance and covariance with age and school achievement and multifactor analysis of variance, we found that behavioral variables established robust, statistically significant differences between groups (p < .001). Children with ADHD scored worse than controls on 31 out of 61 neuropsychological variables. Children with ADHD, however, obtained better scores that were statistically significant on WISC-R Comprehension and Picture completion. A linear discriminant analysis with nine behavioral variables correctly classified 100% of the participants in both groups. Another linear discriminant analysis using 10 neuropsychological variables correctly classified 85.48% of the participants in both groups. We propose a core battery of selected tests for assessing children with ADHD. The significance of cross-cultural analyses of different developmental disturbances is emphasized.     

Rates of meaningful change in the mental health of children in long-term out-of-home care: A seven- to nine-year prospective study

Children residing in long-term out-of-home care have high rates of clinical-level mental health difficulties. However, the stability of these children’s difficulties throughout their time in care is uncertain. This paper reports estimates of the seven- to nine-year stability of carer-reported scores on the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) and Assessment Checklists for Children (ACC) and Adolescents (ACA) for 85 children in long-term foster or kinship care. Prospective score changes on the CBCL total problems and ACC-ACA shared-item scales were assigned to one of four change groups: ‘sustained mental health’; ‘meaningful improvement’; ‘no meaningful change’; and ‘meaningful deterioration’. On each of the two measures, more than 60% of children manifested either sustained mental health or meaningful improvement in their mental health, while less than a quarter showed meaningful deterioration. Mean mental health scores for the aggregate sample did not change over the 7–9 year period. Findings discount the presence of a uniform, population-wide effect—suggesting instead, that children’s mental health follows several distinct trajectories. Rather than asking whether long-term care is generally therapeutic or harmful for the development of previously maltreated children, future investigations should focus on the questions “…what are the systemic and interpersonal characteristics of care that promote and sustain children’s psychological development throughout childhood, and what characteristics are developmentally harmful?” and “…for which children is care therapeutic, and for which children is it not?”     

The creation of information systems for children

Three related activities are reported. One is the development of two data banks designed to supply children with information about many aspects of life in world culture. The second is “engineering” research designed to develop principles on which information system can be developed and used as settings for teaching concepts and modes of inquiry drawn from the social sciences. The third is the exploration of the “data storage and retrieval setting” as a place to conduct research on the social education of children.     

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.     

Social information processing and emotional understanding in children with LD

The present study aimed to comprehensively examine social cognition processes in children with and without learning disabilities (LD), focusing on social information processing (SIP) and complex emotional understanding capabilities such as understanding complex, mixed, and hidden emotions. Participants were 50 children with LD (age range 9.4-12.7; 35 boys, 15 girls) and 50 children without LD matched on grade, age, and gender. Children analyzed 4 social vignettes using Dodge's SIP model and completed 2 emotional recognition tasks (pictures and stories) and 4 emotional knowledge tasks, such as providing definitions and examples for 5 emotions (e.g., loneliness, pride, embarrassment). Study results demonstrated that children with LD had major difficulties in SIP processes and consistent difficulties with the different tasks in the understanding of complex emotions and in higher emotional understanding capabilities, such as understanding that 2 conflicting emotions (love and hate) can be simultaneously experienced. We discuss the implications of such difficulties for the understanding of social competence in children with LD as well as their implications for social skills intervention.     

不同激素配比对诱导三七花蕾愈伤组织影响

文章研究分析了培养基中附加不同种类及浓度的生长素及细胞分裂素对诱导三七花蕾愈伤组织的影响。结果表明,激素对提高愈伤组织的诱导率有很大的促进作用,2,4-D与6-BA及IAA配合使用对诱导三七花蕾愈伤组织效果较好。在MS基本培养基中附加2,4-D 1.0 mg/L、BA 1.0 mg/L、IAA 0.5 mg/L,三七花蕾愈伤组织的诱导率最高达到55.6%,愈伤组织长势好。     

Dimensional salience and judgments of bigness by three-year-old children.

3-year-olds were shown triads of rectangles and asked to select the "big" one, where the biggest rectangle in each triad was neither the tallest nor the widest. Dimensional salience and response choice were highly related. In addition, as saliency of a particular dimension increased relative to the other dimension, significantly more responses were based on that dimension. The results support the notion that the young child does not rely on 1 specific dimension to make judgments of bigness but, rather, attends to the most salient differences among stimuli.     

The effects of prior information upon perceptions of exceptional children

Students in a university special education course were shown three identical videotapes of children in a school setting. The subjects were randomly divided into three groups, each receiving different written background information (“positive,” “neutral,” or “negative”) prior to viewing the videotapes. It was found that the variations in written information had significant effects upon the subjects' perceptions of the children's behavior, and upon the degree to which the children were regarded as able to function successfully in a regular classroom. These findings suggest that attitudes toward exceptional children are influenced by the way in which prior information, such as that contained in a child's educational records, is presented. Teacher and peer acceptance of exceptional children can be increased if information is presented in a realistic and positive manner.     

Strength vs. temporal-order information in delayed-matching-to-sample performance by monkeys

The usual procedure in delayed-matching-to-sample (DMTS) experiments is that the most recently presented sample stimulus is correct on choice tests. The present paper reports two experments in which the first of two samples was always correct. Theories based on trace strength, such as the Roberts and Grant trace strength competition model, predict that such a procedure will yield below chance performance, because on the average the more recently presented stimulus will have the greater trace strength. In contrast, D’Amato and others have proposed that DMTS performance is mediated by a temporal discrimination process and, since either stimulus may act as S+ in a discrimination problem, monkeys should be capable of learning to choose either the secondor the first of two sample stimuli. Performance did not exceed chance in either experiment. The generality of these results is tentatively explored.     

Classification of children in special education: Importance of pre-assessment information

The records of 137 students for whom complete data files were available were examined in order to determine the extent to which pre-assessment data (teacher referral information and standardized reading test scores) could successfully be used to predict the handicapping classifications decided on by child-study teams. We were specifically interested in the predictive power of pre-assessment information above and beyond that provided by handicapped children's race and gender. Results of our analyses indicated that pre-assessment data can successfully predict the handicapped classifications of the majority of special education students, as well as differentiate students who are found eligible for special education from those found to be ineligible.     

The inhibition of exogenous distracting information in children with learning disabilities

Several studies have shown that children with learning disabilities (LD) have difficulty in inhibiting irrelevant information, which generates endogenous interference from working memory. Other inhibition capacities have not yet been investigated, however. This article reports on an experiment examining the capacities of children with LD to inhibit exogenous interference, such as automatic, prepotent responses and distractor interference. Fifteen 11-year-old children with LD and 15 matched controls completed four tasks of inhibition, using the Stroop and Eriksen's flanker paradigms. To test the hypothesis that inhibition can be differentiated in terms of the type of material it acts on, each paradigm was used with numerical and nonnumerical stimuli. Our results showed that children with LD did not exhibit significantly larger interference effects than controls. Moreover, the pattern of results did not differ according to the type of material used. These findings indicate that children with LD do not show impairment in the inhibition of exogenous information--a finding that contradicts the material-specific inhibition hypothesis.