Modeling Phonological Core Deficits Within a Working Memory Architecture in Children and Adults With Developmental Dyslexia

Recent theoretical advances in working memory guided analyses of cognitive measures in 122 children with dyslexia and their 200 affected biological parents in families with a multigenerational history of dyslexia. Both children and adults were most severely impaired, on average, in three working memory components— phonological word-form storage, time-sensitive phonological loop, and executive functions involving phonology. Structural equation modeling showed that, for children, first-order factors from the phonological, orthographic, and/or morphological word forms uniquely predicted 11 reading and writing outcomes but, for adults, a second-order factor (reflecting interrelationships among the three first-order word-form factors) was more likely to be significant in predicting the same reading and writing outcomes. Structural equation modeling of the three working memory component factors showed that the most consistent predictor of text-level reading and writing for both children and adults was the second-order word-form factor. Phonological loop and executive support could be modeled as separate factors in children but only as combined factors in adults. Executive support in children and combined phonological loop and executive support in adults contributed uniquely to oral reading but did not contribute uniquely to reading comprehension or written expression. For both children and adults, individual differences occurred as to which of the three working memory components or three word forms fell outside the normal range.     

Determinants of Self-Worth in Children with and without Developmental Coordination Disorder

Harter (1987) argues that both competence-importance discrepancy and social support/positive regard constructs predict a child's global self-worth. In the current study, this model was used to ascertain whether both determinants were pertinent to the self-worth of children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD: American Psychiatric Association, 1994) and to control children. A group of 36 children with DCD were compared with a matched group of 36 normally coordinated children. The two groups were matched on variables of age, gender, and verbal IQ. It was found that Harter's (1987) model was supported for the group of control children as both the competence-importance discrepancy and the social support/positive regard construct were significant predictors of self-worth. However, for the DCD group, only the competence-importance discrepancy predicted self-worth. The results of this study indicate that future research efforts need to examine an alternative model which incorporates the variables that are relevant to the self-worth of children with DCD.     

Developmental Outcomes for Children at High Risk of Dyslexia and Children With Developmental Language Disorder

We followed children at family risk of dyslexia and children with preschool language difficulties from age 3½, comparing them with controls (N = 234). At age 8, children were classified as having dyslexia or Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) and compared at earlier time points with controls. Children with dyslexia have specific difficulties with phonology and emergent reading skills in the preschool period, whereas children with DLD, with or without dyslexia, show a wider range of impairments including significant problems with executive and motor tasks. For children with both dyslexia and DLD, difficulties with phonology are generally more severe than those observed in children with dyslexia or DLD alone. Findings confirm that poor phonology is the major cognitive risk factor for dyslexia.     

发展性阅读障碍儿童视空间工作记忆特征

视空间工作记忆水平对个体的空间认知及图形学习有着重要影响,威斯康星卡片分类测验的研究表明,发展性阅读障碍儿童在正确应答百分比、错误应答数、非持续性错误百分比、概念化水平及百分比等方面,均明显不及正常儿童,反映出这些障碍儿童存在明显的视空间工作记忆缺陷和额叶执行功能不足的问题。强化阅读障碍儿童视空间工作记忆水平的培养与训练,有助于改善他们大脑额叶功能的发育发展状况。     

Social Networks of Children With Developmental Language Disorder in Inclusive Preschool Programs

This study takes an ecological approach to examine how children with developmental language disorder (DLD) interact with their classmates within early childhood special education (ECSE) inclusive classrooms. Participants were 124 children with DLD, 56 children with other disabilities, and 247 typically developing children (M_age = 52.42 months, SD = 6.27) from 56 ECSE inclusive classrooms. Results of social network analysis showed that children with DLD had significantly smaller peer social networks and were more likely to be isolated. Children tended to interact with peers with the same DLD status. These effects of children's DLD status were above and beyond the effects of children's social pragmatics skills.     

The Cognitive and Behavioral Characteristics of Children With Low Working Memory

This study explored the cognitive and behavioral profiles of children with working memory impairments. In an initial screening of 3,189 five- to eleven-year-olds, 308 were identified as having very low working memory scores. Cognitive skills (IQ, vocabulary, reading, and math), classroom behavior, and self-esteem were assessed. The majority of the children struggled in the learning measures and verbal ability. They also obtained atypically high ratings of cognitive problems/inattentive symptoms and were judged to have short attention spans, high levels of distractibility, problems in monitoring the quality of their work, and difficulties in generating new solutions to problems. These data provide rich new information on the cognitive and behavioral profiles that characterize children with low working memory.     

Developmental Changes in Attention and Comprehension Among Children With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Changes in visual attention and story comprehension for children (N = 132) with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and comparison peers were examined. Between the ages of 7 and 9 (Phase 1) and approximately 21 months later (Phase 2), children viewed 2 televised stories: 1 in the presence of toys and 1 in their absence. Both groups of children showed developmental increases in visual attention and stable group differences over time. Deficits in comprehension among children with ADHD, however, increased over time. Whereas comparison children’s recall of factual and causal information increased over time in both viewing conditions, children with ADHD showed no developmental improvement in recall of factual information in the toys‐present condition and no improvement in recall of causal relations in either viewing condition.     

Visual Processing Deficits in Children With Slow RAN Performance

Two groups of 8- to 10-year-olds differing in rapid automatized naming speed but matched for age, verbal and nonverbal ability, phonological awareness, phonological memory, and visual acuity participated in four experiments investigating early visual processing. As low RAN children had significantly slower simple reaction times (SRT) this was entered as a covariate in all subsequent data analyses. Low RAN children were significantly slower to make same/different judgments to simple visual features, non-nameable letter-like forms and letters, with difference in SRT controlled. Speed differences to letter-like forms and letters disappeared once RTs to simple visual features were controlled. We conclude that slow RAN children have difficulty in discriminating simple visual features that cannot be explained in terms of a more general speed of processing deficit, a deficit in making same/different judgments, or to differences in word reading ability.     

Phonological Spelling and Reading Deficits in Children With Spelling Disabilities

Spelling errors in the Wide Range Achievement Test were analyzed for 77 pairs of children, each of which included one older child with spelling disability (SD) and one spelling-level-matched younger child with normal spelling ability from the Colorado Learning Disabilities Research Center database. Spelling error analysis consisted of a percent graphotactic-accuracy (GA) score based on syllable position and existence in English, and a phonological accuracy score (PA). The SD group scored significantly worse in the PA measure and nonsignificantly better than controls on the GA measure. The Group × Measure interaction was significant. Spelling matched pairs had very similar scores for word recognition and orthographic coding, but the SD group exhibited significant deficits in reading measures of phonological decoding and in language measures of phonological awareness.     

自闭症谱系障碍个体社会奖赏加工缺陷的神经机制

自闭症谱系障碍(ASD)是一种以社会交往障碍为主要特征的神经发育障碍,ASD的社会交往障碍与社会动机的缺乏有关,主要表现为社会奖赏加工缺陷.已有的神经影像学、脑电成分和神经化学成分的研究从神经机制上揭示了ASD个体的社会奖赏加工存在缺陷,并且该缺陷发生在奖赏预期阶段,但其非社会奖赏加工能力和奖赏加工阶段是否也存在缺陷没...     

Phonological Working Memory of Children in Two German Special Schools

In two studies, 10‐year‐olds from 2 German special schools as well as typically developing children of the same chronological age (CA controls) or the same mental age (MA controls) were compared on several aspects of working memory functions (i.e., size and input quality of the phonological store, speed and automatic activation of the subvocal rehearsal process). Results reveal that the children from the special schools reached the MA control but not the CA control children's level of non‐word repetition and also showed a statistically significant phonological similarity effect on memory span. These results were interpreted as evidence for a developmental lag in the functioning of the phonological store in these children. With regard to the subvocal rehearsal process, the results were mixed. While the children in the special schools outperformed the MA controls in speech rate, it was found that, in contrast to both control groups, they did not show any word‐length effect on memory span. This finding might be interpreted as evidence for a structural deficit impeding the automatic activation of the subvocal rehearsal process.     

汉语发展性阅读障碍儿童内外源线索条件下的眼跳

使用镜像反眼跳范式,利用眼动技术对34名五年级儿童(年龄匹配组17人,阅读障碍组17人)在内外源线索条件下的眼跳表现进行了考察,以进一步探讨汉语发展性阅读障碍的产生机制.结果发现,只有在外源线索条件下,阅读障碍儿童的正确眼跳潜伏期长于正常儿童;阅读障碍儿童在两种线索条件下的眼跳方向错误率均高于正常儿童;阅读障碍儿童的眼跳平均速率与正常儿童没有差异.本研究结果进一步支持了阅读障碍儿童的注意和眼跳缺陷可能是导致其阅读困难的共同原因.     

Third-Party Sociomoral Evaluations in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

We examined explicit and implicit processes in response to third-party moral transgressions in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Twenty 4- to 7-year-old children with ASD and 19 typically developing controls evaluated dynamic visual stimuli depicting intentional or accidental harm to persons or damage to objects. Moral evaluations, eye fixations, and pupil dilations toward the stimuli were collected. Results indicate a preserved capacity to understand the mental states of perpetrators and an implicit moral sensitivity to the third-party harms in children with ASD. Nonetheless, children with ASD showed specific sensitivity and emotional arousal when viewing damage to objects. These findings contribute to the understanding of the underlying mechanisms of moral reasoning in ASD and its possible association with the autistic symptoms.     

我国学习困难儿童工作记忆研究的文献计量分析

本文对我国关于学习困难儿童工作记忆研究的23篇论文进行了文献计量分析.研究论文总体数量较少,研究的关注群体主要集中于学习困难的中小学生,研究方法以实验为多,研究思路以学习困难儿童与非学习困难儿童比较为主,中央执行功能、空间工作记忆和言语工作记忆成为考察差异的三个维度.存在的主要问题是:对于学习困难儿童诊断模糊;工作记忆测量工具不统一,缺乏有效的测量工具;研究全部为描述性研究,缺乏干预研究;神经心理学取向研究缺乏.     

Letter Processing and the Formation of Memory Representations in Children with Naming Speed Deficits

The ability to recognize letter patterns within words as a single unit is important for fluent reading. This skill is based on previously established memory representations of common letter patterns. The ability to form these memory representations may be impaired in some poor readers, particularly readers with naming speed deficits (NSD). This study explored factors that influence letter processing and the subsequent formation of memory representations of letter strings in children with and without a NSD. Children were presented with a letter string, followed by a probe unit that was either a single letter, a two-letter cluster, or a repetition of the whole string. Children indicated whether or not the probe had been present in the preceding string. Two factors were manipulated: (a) amount of time to process the initial letter string, and (b) level of orthographic structure present in the letter string. Results indicated that overall, children with NSD performed less accurately than children without NSD. However, children with NSD showed no differential benefit in performance as a result of longer time to process a letter string. In addition, all readers were able to make use of the orthographic structure in a letter string to aid performance. Implications of results for establishing memory representations of letter strings are discussed.     

学习不良者的工作记忆特点

有关学习不良者的工作记忆特点的研究表明,阅读不良者与数学学习不良者都存在语音回路功能缺陷(如语音表征的效率低)以及中央执行器功能缺陷(如对注意控制的能力不足) ,即学习不良与工作记忆缺陷密切相关。今后的研究应进一步探明学习不良者工作记忆缺陷的深层原因。     

Auditory Morphological Knowledge Among Children With Developmental Dyslexia

The aim of the present study is to examine the morphological knowledge of readers with developmental dyslexia compared to chronological age and reading-level matched controls. The study also analyzes the errors dyslexics make and their metamorphological awareness compared to controls. Participants included 31 seventh-grade dyslexic children and two matched control groups of normal readers: 34 seventh graders matched for chronological age and 32 third graders matched for reading age. Two tasks were administered via the auditory modality—morphological priming and morphological analogies task. We also performed error analysis and a metamorphological interview. Our analyses reveal that although dyslexics perform equally to chronological age matched controls on the priming task and similarly to reading-level matched controls on the morphological analogies task, their errors and metamorphological awareness are qualitatively different.     

孤独症儿童工作记忆的研究现状

从20世纪80年代开始,执行功能逐渐成为发展心理学研究的一个热点,因此孤独症执行功能的探讨也逐渐受到关注.其中作为孤独症执行功能障碍中一个非常重要组成部分的工作记忆更是成为了当今孤独症研究中的一个热点问题.本文在对文献资料进行梳理的基础上,系统介绍了孤独症儿童工作记忆的研究方法和孤独症儿童工作记忆的主要研究成果.最后,对孤独症儿童工作记忆的研究进行了小结和展望.     

学龄前儿童执行功能与注意缺陷多动症状的元分析:抑制控制和工作记忆的作用

注意缺陷多动障碍(ADHD)的执行功能缺陷理论已在学龄期儿童和青少年中被广泛证明,学龄前是执行功能发展的重要时期,学龄前儿童执行功能与ADHD症状的关系尚存争议.采用元分析的方法整合国内外近十年的文献,探讨学龄前儿童执行功能与ADHD症状的关系,并分析影响因素.通过文献检索,纳入符合要求的文献28篇,共70个有效数据,...     

Atypical Developmental Trajectories of Early Perception Among School-Age Children With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder During a Visual Search Task

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by cognitive deficits associated with attention. Prior studies have revealed the potential impact of ADHD on basic perception and cognitive ability in patients with ADHD. In this study, bilateral posterior P1 and N1 were measured in 122 Chinese children aged 7–12 years (64 with ADHD) to investigate the developmental characteristics of early perception during visual processing in school-age children with ADHD. For children with ADHD, a larger P1 activity with an atypical developmental pattern was evoked and observed for the visual search performance. These findings offer new insights into the mechanisms of cognitive developmental deficits and intervention techniques in children with ADHD.