Erland Hjelmquist

Executive Function/Attention Deficits in Boys with Asperger Syndrome, Attention Disorder and Reading/Writing Disorder

Executive function/attention deficits were examined in children with Asperger syndrome, attention disorder and reading/ writing disorder and in a group of normal children. Neuropsychological tests as well as cognitive tasks measuring different components in the processing of information were used. The measures were divided into Mirsky’s four components of attention, namely ‘sustain’,‘focus-execute’,‘shift’ and ‘encode’. All abnormal groups differed markedly from the normal group on measures of executive function/attention. The group diagnosed as having attention disorder showed the most consistent difficulties. However, no specific marker of ‘executive function deficits’ that could represent the three different disorders was found.

Autism spectrum and attention-deficit disorders in girls. Some neuropsychological aspects.

Abstract This study compared the neuropsychological test profiles of non-mentally retarded girls and boys consecutively referred to a neuropsychiatric clinic and those of contrast cases of girls from mainstream classrooms of one Göteborg school district. To avoid overreliance on the male prototype with regard to diagnostic criteria the clinical group comprised a mixed sample of girls and boys without diagnostic subgrouping. Clinic girls had a lower IQ than comparison girls. Girls were more impaired than the boys with respect to executive functions and scored less well on theory of mind tasks. Previous studies have shown girls with autism and mental retardation to be more severely affected than boys both with regard to level of intellectual functioning and overall measures of brain dysfunction. The present study indicates that clinic girls with a variety of neuropsychiatric disorders at higher levels of intellectual functioning (some of which met diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorder) may also be more severely affected than boys with corresponding types of “surface” problems.

Phonologic awareness and literacy abilities in nonspeaking preschool children with cerebral palsy

Eight nonspeaking and eight nondisabled preschool children, 5 to 7 years of age, were studied with respect to phonologic abilities and literacy competence. The groups were matched for age and intellectual level. Both groups performed comparably on tests of phonologic awareness. The comparison group, however, scored higher than the disability group on the reading and writing tests, despite equal performance on phonologic tests. This difference between the groups fits with previous findings. On the other hand, it has been shown repeatedly among children without disabilities that phonologic awareness is highly predictive of literacy skills. This did not seem to hold for the nonspeaking children in this study. Explanations of the results were suggested including perceptual/cognitive limitations and limited interaction possibilities with the environment, resulting in limited acquaintance with print in a broad sense.

The non-specificity of theory of mind deficits: Evidence from children with communicative disabilities

The aim of the present paper was to investigate the performance on theory of mind tasks of four different clinical groups: children with deficits in attention, motor control and perception (DAMP), children with autism, children with Asperger syndrome, and non-vocal cerebral-palsied children. The children with DAMP performed on the same level as the comparison group on the first and second order theory of mind task. The children with autism and Asperger syndrome performed somewhat lower than the children with DAMP and the comparison group. However, in respect of the specifcity issue, only 6 out of 14 of the non-vocal participants successfully solved the first order theory of mind task, while 13 out of 14 children in a comparison group did. The children were matched for chronological age and IQ. The findings suggest that deficits in theory of mind are not specific to the autistic continuum, but can be found in other groups with communicative disabilities, implying that linguistic and communicative skills are important precursors in the development of theory of mind. The study also shows that severe dysfunction in attention, motor control, and perception is not associated with any theory of mind difficulties.

Language and literacy in nonvocal children with cerebral palsy

Metalinguistic and literacy abilities were studied in twenty-seven nonvocal cerebral palsied school children. The participants of the study were presented four tests of phonological awareness: rhyme recognition, sound identification, phoneme synthesis and word length analysis. Their verbal comprehension was measured using a semantic and a syntactic task. Two tests of nonverbal memory: the visual sequential task from ITPA and Corsi blocks and the Digit Span task from WISC, were also included. These measures were related to their reading and spelling ability. The nonvocal children performed on a lower level on the reading and spelling tasks than did the children of two comparison groups, one matched for mental age and one for mental and chronological age. There were no differences in phonological awareness or in verbal memory. The disabled children performed worse on the verbal comprehension task than the children in the comparison groups. Although the reading and spelling results were low in the nonvocal group there were children showing some literacy skills. A within-group analysis performed in the nonvocal group showed that the reading children performed better on all memory tests, and on the sound identification and the word length analysis tasks than the nonreading ones. They also showed better results on verbal comprehension, the semantic task and used more symbols in their communication. Synthetic speech was more often used in reading and spelling education in the reading subgroup than in the nonreading. Metalinguistic abilities and possibility of acoustic rehearsal are discussed as important factors in reading and spelling acquisition in the nonvocal population.

Memory for conversations

A growing amount of research has given evidence which indicates that memory for surface structure characteristics of naturally produced verbal discourse can be quite substantial. This is not in agreement with the idea that it is only the conceptual meaning or gist of a verbal message that is stored. Research that has given evidence in favor of the latter contention has not used a naturally produced discourse. Instead, subjects have usually been instructed to read or listen to prepared material. In this study, peoples recognition memory for utterances from dyadic conversations was studied. Three types of utterances were used, namely, utterances that were exactly as they had appeared in the conversation, paraphrased utterances, and new utterances. The results supported the possibility that memory for surface structure features is important and a normal characteristic of how one remembers naturally produced discourse. Moreover, comparisons with earlier findings that have shown that memory for ones own utte...

Theory of mind in children with severe speech and physical impairment (SSPI): a longitudinal study

Six children with cerebral palsy and severe speech impairment took part in a two‐phase longitudinal study of development of social cognition. The children ranged in age from 5 to 7 years old at data collection time 1 and from nine to 11 years old at data collection time 2. Using a model of normal development of Theory of Mind (ToM) suggested by Gopnik and Slaughter (1991), the children were tested on a number of tasks requiring (ToM). The findings suggest that the children with speech impairment follow a normal pattern of development, but with a severe delay compared with children without disability. The results are discussed in relation to problems in early social and communicative experience for the group of children with cerebral palsy and severe speech impairment.

A comparative, descriptive study of reading and writing skills among non‐speaking children: a preliminary study

For many non-speaking. Bliss-using persons with cerebral palsy (CP), literacy skills seem hard to achieve, although their cognitive functioning and verbal reception skills would predict good reading and writing. The aim of this study was to describe literacy skills in relation to intellectual level and to level of phonological awareness, which are both considered important predictors of literacy in the speaking population. Seven disabled adolescents participated in the study. In a comparison group there were seven children matched for results on a non-verbal intelligence test and a test of phonological awareness. The subjects in the disability group performed on a lower level on reading and spelling variables than the subjects in the comparison group. The results also indicated that the spelling skills of the subjects in the disability group were more developed than their reading skills, and that spelling of words represented by photographs of well-known objects, presented visually only, seemed more difficult than spelling of words presented orally. A tentative explanation of these latter two results was proposed, namely that the phonological awareness of the subjects facilitated spelling, but that access to phonological and orthographic representation of visually presented material might be more difficult than orally presented material for non-speaking persons. The differences between the two groups also suggested that the subjects in the disabled group seemed to have difficulty in benefiting from formal literacy skills training at school.

Mentalizing skills of non-native, early signers: : A longitudinal perspective

Using a longitudinal design, the mentalizing skills of a group of deaf children were tested with a wide array of theory of mind tasks over a period of three years. A selection of results from the first two years of testing is reported here. The children were non-native signers, but had been offered a good regime for the development of sign language as soon as their deafness was discovered. A comparison group of hearing children matched for mental age and sex also took part. There was a wide variation in performance between children in the deaf group, both across different tasks and over time, while the hearing group performed more or less at ceiling on all of the tasks included already at the first data collection time, and showed very little variation in performance across tasks. Also, the deaf children, as well as the hearing children, performed 100% correct on a test of non-mental representation, i.e., the false-photo task (Zaitchik, 1990). The present results speak in favour of the crucial importance of early communication using a common language for the typical developmental trajectory of mentalizing skills.

Linguistics, AAC, and metalinguistics in communicatively handicapped adolescents

This study had two aims: first, to give an overview of current research on metalinguistic skills and their development and to point to the relevance of this research to the augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) field; and second, to demonstrate how methods based on the reasoning in the metalinguistic field can be applied to the communicative situation of a group of Bliss-using persons. Since a characteristic of many AAC users is that they lack productive spoken communication, studies of their metalinguistic skills put special demands on the tests and methodologies used. At the same time, it is evident that the metalinguistic skills of persons with severe communication disorders are highly relevant from both a theoretical and an applied point of view. The perspective outlined in the overview was used in a study of eight Bliss-using subjects who were tested with respect to comprehension of oral language, metalinguistic functions, and reading/writing variables. The results point to the importance ...