Delphine Bastard-Rosset

Attention to low-and high-spatial frequencies in categorizing facial identities, emotions and gender in children with autism

This study was aimed at investigating face categorization strategies in children with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD). Performance of 17 children with ASD was compared to that of 17 control children in a face-matching task, including hybrid faces (composed of two overlapping faces of different spatial bandwidths) and either low- or high-pass filtered faces. Participants were asked to match faces on the basis of identity, emotion or gender. Results revealed that children with ASD used the same strategies as controls when matching faces by gender. By contrast, in the identity and the emotion conditions, children with ASD showed a high-pass bias (i.e., preference for local information), contrary to controls. Consistent with previous studies on autism, these findings suggest that children with ASD do use atypical (local-oriented) strategies to process faces.

Schizophrénie ou syndrome d'Asperger ?

Patients with Asperger syndrome are often diagnosed late or are wrongly considered to have schizophrenia. Misdiagnosing Asperger syndrome creates serious problems by preventing effective therapy. Several clinical signs described in Asperger syndrome could also be considered as clinical signs of schizophrenia, including impaired social interactions, disabilities in communication, restricted interests, and delusions of persecution. A number of clinical features may facilitate the differential diagnosis: younger age at onset, family history of pervasive developmental disorder, recurring conversations on the same topic, pragmatic aspects of language use, oddities of intonation and pitch, lack of imagination, and incomprehension of social rules are more characteristic of Asperger syndrome. Accurate distinction between Asperger syndrome and schizophrenia would make it possible to offer more treatment appropriate to the patients functioning.

Mise au pointSchizophrénie ou syndrome d’Asperger ?Schizophrenia or Asperger syndrome?

Patients with Asperger syndrome are often diagnosed late or are wrongly considered to have schizophrenia. Misdiagnosing Asperger syndrome creates serious problems by preventing effective therapy. Several clinical signs described in Asperger syndrome could also be considered as clinical signs of schizophrenia, including impaired social interactions, disabilities in communication, restricted interests, and delusions of persecution. A number of clinical features may facilitate the differential diagnosis: younger age at onset, family history of pervasive developmental disorder, recurring conversations on the same topic, pragmatic aspects of language use, oddities of intonation and pitch, lack of imagination, and incomprehension of social rules are more characteristic of Asperger syndrome. Accurate distinction between Asperger syndrome and schizophrenia would make it possible to offer more treatment appropriate to the patients functioning.

Troubles bipolaires : continuité enfant-adulte ?

Resume Les troubles bipolaires a debut precoce suscitent encore de nombreuses interrogations en particulier chez l’enfant du fait des nombreuses particularites cliniques des episodes thymiques pour cette tranche d’âge. Il n’existe en effet aucun consensus sur la prevalence de ce trouble pendant la periode pre pubertaire. Ce diagnostic reste donc tres controverse chez l’enfant et le preadolescent, et nous essaierons de comprendre pourquoi. Cette problematique de la continuite entre les troubles bipolaires de l’enfant et de l’adulte, nous interroge egalement sur l’existence de facteurs predictifs des troubles bipolaires chez l’adulte. Nous tenterons a travers des etudes concernant l’enfance des adultes bipolaires mais egalement des etudes sur les enfants de parents bipolaires, d’identifier les troubles psychopathologiques qui precedent le trouble bipolaire.Early onset (pediatric) bipolar disorders are still an issue of much controversy due to several clinical particularities of the thymic episodes at this age. To date, there is indeed no consensus regarding the prevalence of bipolar disorders before puberty. Diagnosis criteria in children and young adolescents remain thus elusive. The purpose of this review is to provide an overview of this issue. The idea of continuity, from childhood to adulthood, in bipolar disorders also raises important questions regarding predictive factors of bipolar disorders in adults. Studies on the childhood of bipolar adults, as well as studies on the children of bipolar parents will be reviewed, in an attempt to identify the psychopathological substrates of bipolar disorders.