Adolescent cannabis use is associated with working memory impairment. The present randomized controlled trial assigned adolescents ages 14 to 21 enrolled in cannabis use treatment to receive either working memory training (experimental group) or a control training (control group) as an adjunctive treatment. Cognitive function, drug use, and other…

The infant brain may be predisposed to identify perceptually salient cues that are common to both signed and spoken languages. Recent theory based on spoken languages has advanced sonority as one of these potential language acquisition cues. Using a preferential looking paradigm with an infrared eye tracker, we explored visual attention of hearing…

Background: Episodic autobiographical memory (EAM) has not been extensively investigated in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The objective of this study was to examine EAM in school-age children with ADHD in reference to the encoding period: recent memories (previous school years) and remote memories (first years of…

Background: Intra-individual variability reflects temporal variation within an individual's performance on a cognitive task. Children with developmental disorders, such as ADHD and ASD show increased levels of intra-individual variability. In typical development, intra-individual variability decreases sharply between the ages 6 and 20. The tight…

It has been suggested that working memory training programs are effective both as treatments for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and other cognitive disorders in children and as a tool to improve cognitive ability and scholastic attainment in typically developing children and adults. However, effects across studies appear to be…

Cognitive autism research is mainly focusing on children and young adults even though we know that autism is a life-long disorder and that healthy aging already has a strong impact on cognitive functioning. We compared the neuropsychological profile of 23 individuals with autism and 23 healthy controls (age range 51-83 years). Deficits were…

Objective: It is an open question whether working memory (WM) and response inhibition (RI) constitute one integral phenotype in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Method: The authors investigated 45 adult ADHD patients and 41 controls comparable for age, gender, intelligence, and education during a letter n-back and a stop-signal…

Objective: This study examines adolescent-specific practical problems associated with current practice parameters for diagnosing attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) to inform recommendations for the diagnosis of ADHD in adolescents. Specifically, issues surrounding the use of self- versus informant ratings, diagnostic threshold, and…

Background: Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) involve a core deficit in social functioning and impairments in the ability to recognize face emotions. In an emotional faces task designed to constrain group differences in attention, the present study used functional MRI to characterize activation in the amygdala, ventral prefrontal cortex (vPFC), and…

Dichotic listening test (DL) is an important tool to disclose speech dominance in healthy subjects and in clinical cases. The aim of this study was to probe if focal epilepsy in children reveals a corresponding suppression of the ear reports contralateral to seizure onset site. Thus, 15 children and adolescents with clinically and…

Background: Heightened error and conflict monitoring are considered central mechanisms in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and are associated with anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) function. Pediatric obsessive-compulsive patients provide an opportunity to investigate the development of this area and its associations with psychopathology.…

Purpose: Early onset of behavioral disorders is predictive of long term adverse outcomes. There are some indicated and selective early prevention programs for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), one of the most common behavioral disorders in childhood and adolescence. The purpose of this paper is to present a universal preschool…

As part of a longitudinal investigation of infants at familial risk for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), mothers and fathers independently completed temperament ratings on their infants. In this paper, we examine the 7-, 12-, and 25-month temperament of 58 boys, 36 of whom were considered at familial risk for ADHD and 22 of whom…

Objective: The aim of this follow-up study was to investigate the course of performance in attentional tasks in children with ADHD and normal controls in late childhood and preadolescence over short periods of time. The development of two dimensions of attention was compared: alertness/arousal and inhibitory control. Method: Children with ADHD (N…

Three groups of children of different ages who were considered by their teachers as showing symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and matched controls were tested in a series of expressive writing tasks, derived from a standardized writing test. In the first study, 24 sixth- and seventh-grade children with ADHD symptoms wrote…