The wide attentional window: a major deficit of children with attention difficulties

The present study assessed visual selective attention in children with attention difficulties compared to age-matched, typically achieving children. We used the flanker task, which requires participants to respond to a central target flanked by distractors, and the feature and conjunction visual search, which requires participants to search for a predesignated target embedded among a variable number of distractors. The results showed that children with attention difficulties encountered major problems only when responding to a central target flanked by adjacent incongruent distractors and when searching for a conjunctive target in a high-density display. These results suggest that children with attention difficulties have a characteristic inability to restrict visual attention to a limited spatial area so as to selectively process relevant information while effectively ignoring distracting information.     

Developmental dyscalculia is a familial learning disability

Whereas current evidence attests to a genetic component in the etiology of dyslexia and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), little is known about the role of genetics in developmental dyscalculia (DC). The objective of this study was to determine the familial aggregation of DC. Siblings and parents of children with DC were assessed for arithmetic, reading and attention disorders. The criteria for DC were an IQ higher than 85, poor performance in arithmetic, and a significant discrepancy between arithmetic achievement and IQ. The study group was composed of 39 children with DC, 21 mothers, 22 fathers, 90 siblings, and 16 second-degree relatives. We found that 66% of mothers, 40% of fathers, 53% of siblings, and 44% of second-degree relatives had DC. The intraclass correlation between the sib pairs was .27. A 95% confidential interval (CI) for the prevalence of DC among siblings of DC probands (see Note 1) ranged from 40% to 64%, indicating a familial prevalence almost tenfold higher than expected for the general population. IQ and attention problems were not risk factors for DC. We conclude that DC, like other learning disabilities, has a significant familial aggregation, suggesting a role for genetics in the evolution of this disorder.     

Proceedings of the Thirteenth Annual Conference of the National Council for Jewish Education

ABSTRACT

Citations are one of the ways that scholars engage one another in dialogue, debate, and discussion. As such, they represent a powerful way in which practitioners constitute themselves and others within a scholarly field. This article studies the citational practices of articles published in the Journal of Jewish Education over a 10-year period in order to discover how scholars have constituted the field of research in Jewish Education. Using social network analysis and qualitative examination, this article presents an unprecedented portrait of the field of knowledge including its strengths and new directions for scholarly investigation and analysis of how the field of research in Jewish education has been formed, and how citational references have shaped how scholars and practitioners understand what we know about Jewish education.     

Self-teaching in normal and disabled readers

This study set out to investigate the self-teaching of good and poor readers in pointed Hebrew – a highly regular orthography. Four groups of children (three groups in Grades 4 to 6, and one group in Grade 2) were included in this study; poor readers with large discrepancies between IQ and reading (dyslexics), IQ-nondiscrepant poor readers (non-dyslexic or garden-variety poor readers), chronological-age matched normal readers, and a group of younger normal readers matched to the older garden-variety group on both reading and mental age. It was hypothesized that primary deficits in phonological recoding (decoding) would impair the identification of novel target words (fictitious names of fruits/towns/stars/coins, etc.) appearing in text, which, in turn, would lead to deficient orthographic memory for target spellings. Alternative predictions were derived with regard to the degree of orthographic deficiency. According to the compensatory processing hypothesis, orthographic learning was expected to be relatively less impaired among disabled readers compared to normal readers. The alternative dissociation hypothesis, on the other hand, predicts that disabled readers orthographic learning would be significantly more impaired than that of normal readers. Neither hypothesis was supported. Impaired orthographic learning, commensurate with levels of target decoding success, was evident in the post-test spelling and orthographic choices of both groups of poor readers. Indeed, a close link was observed between levels of target word decoding and the acquisition of orthographic information among all three older groups of children. No qualitative differences between dyslexics and garden-variety poor readers emerged in patterns of self-teaching. While the data from the three older groups supported a model of developmental delay rather than deviance, findings from the younger reading-age/mental-age controls revealed startling qualitative divergence in orthographic learning. No statistically reliable evidence was obtained for orthographic learning in these younger beginning readers who displayed an essentially surface pattern of non-lexical reading. A hybrid orthographic sensitivity hypothesis was proposed to account for these data, according to which an initially surface-style of word reading engendered by a highly regular orthography gives way to a highly specialized print-specific (orthographic) processing advantage that develops in the course of the second school year as an outgrowth of a critical volume of print experience.     

Emotional and behavioral characteristics over a six-year period in youths with persistent and nonpersistent dyscalculia

The authors examined behavior problems in a matched sample of 58 youths with persistent dyscalculia (PD) and nonpersistent dyscalculia (NPD). Participants were classified as having dyscalculia at age 10-11 years. Parents completed the Child Behavior Checklist for their children at ages 10-11, 13-14, and 16-17 years, while the youths did so at the last two age periods. Only at age 16-17 years were there significantly more problems, particularly attention problems and externalizing problems, reported by parents for PD youths compared to NPD youths. A higher percentage in the PD group than in the NPD group received scores in the clinical range for externalizing problems. However, the mean levels of behavior problems at this age and the earlier ages were within the normal range for both groups. For youth-reported problems, the only significant difference was for attention problems at 16-17 years. Therapeutic interventions should focus on the academic domain and improving and altering behavioral patterns.     

The diversity of attention deficits in ADHD: the prevalence of four cognitive factors in ADHD versus controls

The performance of participants with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) relative to control participants was measured on four tasks uniquely assessing the functions of selective attention, executive attention, sustained attention, and orienting of attention. The results showed that deficits in sustained attention were the most pronounced, characterizing most participants with ADHD and deficits in each of the other three functions characterized more than half of these participants. Different participants with ADHD revealed different clusters of attentional deficits. These results call for a revision of leading theories of ADHD that identify the core of the pathology as a sole deficit in executive functions.