Poor sleep is a common feature in autism even though patients themselves do not necessarily complain. The impact of poor sleep on daytime cognitive functioning in autism is not well-known and we therefore investigated whether sleep in autism correlates with daytime cognitive performance. A battery of non-verbal tasks was administered, in the…

Individuals with ADHD often show performance deficits in motor tasks. It is not clear, however, whether this reflects less effective acquisition of skill (procedural knowledge), or deficient consolidation into long-term memory, in ADHD. The aim of the study was to compare the acquisition of skilled motor performance, the expression of…

In young children, visual attention, analysis or memory is only rarely evaluated. Moreover, tools to test for such higher-order visual capacities in children are limited. In an attempt to develop and refine such tools, we selected nine tests to assess visuo-attentional abilities before formal reading education (grade 1). The battery consisted of…

The detection of specific factors of the developmental dyslexia at an early stage, and the identification of the role of those factors responsible for its manifestation, is a fundamental area of study on dyslexia in the recent literature. The objective of the present study is to clarify that dysfunctions in the following specific domains…

Sleep supports the consolidation of declarative and procedural memory. While prefrontal cortex (PFC) activity supports the consolidation of declarative memory during sleep, opposite effects of PFC activity are reported with respect to the consolidation of procedural memory during sleep. Patients with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)…

The purpose of the present study was to assess which types of neuropsychological deficits appear to be most commonly associated with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in adults. The effect of the combination of ASD with ADHD (ASD/ADHD) was also studied. One hundred and sixty-one adult individuals…

Persons with mild and moderate mental retardation and CA-matched persons without mental retardation performed a dual-task, "pencil-and-paper task" (Baddeley, Della Sala, Gray, Papagno, & Spinnler (1997). Testing central executive functioning with a pencil-and-paper test. In Rabbit (Ed.), Methodology of Frontal and Executive Function (pp. 61-80).…

The behavioural phenotype of velocardiofacial syndrome (VCFS), one of the most common human multiple anomaly syndromes, includes developmental disabilities, frequently including intellectual disability (ID) and high risk of diagnosis of psychotic disorders including schizophrenia. VCFS may offer a model of the relationship between ID and risk of…

The aim was to examine the rates and types of parent reported neuropsychiatric problems in children and adolescents with mild mental retardation (MMR) (mild intellectual disability/UK) using the Five-To-Fifteen questionnaire (FTF). The target group comprised all pupils with clinically diagnosed MMR, aged between 7 and 15 years, attending the…

Few studies have specifically investigated the cognitive correlates of employment for persons with mental retardation. To evaluate the relationship of cognitive and adaptive functioning to work status, 56 competitively employed and 55 unemployed individuals with mental retardation underwent a comprehensive neuropsychological and adaptive…