Background: Addiction medicine still largely neglects the topic of mild and borderline intellectual disabilities (MBID), although patients with MBID are considered a risk group for substance-related problems and offending behaviour. This study aimed to explore the cognitive and adaptive impairments of inpatients in forensic addiction mental health…

Tests of measurement invariance are essential to determining whether individual scores or group averages are comparable across populations. While international comparisons of mean IQ scores are common, tests of measurement invariance for intelligence test batteries (necessary for comparisons to be empirically supported) are rare. In this study,…

Children's speech is influenced by the speech they hear, in particular by the parental speech addressed directly to them. The aim of this study was to analyse toddlers' speech with their parents and to investigate the influence of specific characteristics of child-directed speech on child speech in real time during mother-child and father-child…

Individual differences in music traits are heritable and correlated with the development of cognitive and communication skills, but little is known about whether diverse modes of music engagement (e.g., playing instruments vs. singing) reflect similar underlying genetic/environmental influences. Moreover, the biological etiology underlying the…

Goals: This study examined: (a) crystallized/fluid intelligence trajectories of adolescents and adults with Down syndrome; and (b) the contribution of endogenous (health, activities of daily living--ADL) and exogenous (cognitively stimulating leisure activities) factors on adults' intelligence with age. Method: Four cohorts (N = 80) with Down…

Adults with intellectual and developmental disability (IDD) increasingly are accessing inclusive college programs to gain academic and employment preparation for future community living. Decision-making and self-determination are two inter-related skills taught in these programs. In this study, we investigated an intervention that combined remote…

Colleges across the nation have seen an increase in programming for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) over the past decade. With this increase in programming comes the need to support students with IDD while accessing a large college campus. Using technology, such as Google Maps™, on one's cell phone is a natural…

Understanding the role of negative emotionality in the development of executive functioning (EF) and language skills can help identify developmental windows that may provide promising opportunities for intervention. In addition, because EF and language skills are, in part, genetically influenced, intergenerational transmission patterns are…