The architecture of sleep undergoes distinct changes during childhood and early adolescence. Slow wave sleep is involved in memory processing and may support active consolidation of newly encoded representations to support the formation of abstracted "gist" memories. Here, we examined sleep and overnight memory formation in German school…

Recent studies have highlighted the potential role of basic numerical processing in the acquisition of numerical and mathematical competences. However, it is debated whether high-level numerical skills and mathematics depends specifically on basic numerical representations. In this study mathematicians and nonmathematicians performed a basic…

The current study examined age-related change of saccadic reaction time (SRT) in persons with intellectual disabilities (ID). Participants were 29 persons with intellectual disabilities aged between 14 and 34 years whose IQs were between 14 and 70. Participants were divided into Group I (IQ greater than or equal to 35) and Group II (IQ less than…

More than a century ago, Galton and Spearman suggested that there was a functional relationship between sensory discrimination ability and intelligence. Studies have since been able to confirm a close relationship between general discrimination ability (GDA) and IQ. The aim of the present study was to assess whether this strong relationship…

Difficulties suppressing previously encountered but currently irrelevant information from working memory characterize less skilled comprehenders in studies in which they are matched to skilled comprehenders on word decoding and nonverbal IQ. These "extreme" group designs are associated with several methodological issues. When sample size…

Although still a matter of some debate, there is a growing body of research supporting Early and Intensive Behavioral Intervention as the intervention of choice for children with autism. Learning rate is an alternative to change in standard scores as an outcome measure in studies of early intervention. Learning rates can be displayed graphically…

Objective: This article first summarizes key research findings from the Pittsburgh Youth Study from 1987 to the present, and focuses on delinquency in 1,517 young men who have been followed up from late childhood into their 20s. Second, the article addresses how indicators of self-control prospectively predict later offending, and whether the…

This study provides the first direct evidence of cognitive continuity for multiple specific information processing abilities from infancy and toddlerhood to pre-adolescence, and provides support for the view that infant abilities form the basis of later childhood abilities. Data from a large sample of children (N = 131) were obtained at five…

Background: Cognitive processes and mechanisms underlying the strong link between attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and social problems remain unclear. Limited knowledge also exists regarding a subgroup of youth with ADHD who do not have social problems. This study investigated the extent to which executive function (EF) mediated the…

This research examined how motivation (perceived control, intrinsic motivation, and extrinsic motivation), cognitive learning strategies (deep and surface strategies), and intelligence jointly predict long-term growth in students' mathematics achievement over 5 years. Using longitudinal data from six annual waves (Grades 5 through 10;…

Spontaneous classification was assessed using a free serial search task in 18 school-aged children at the high functioning end of the autistic spectrum and compared with results from age-matched typically developing controls. The task required participants to touch shapes in an exhaustive non-repetitive sequence. The positions of the items varied…

We investigated whether typically-developing children with a gift for drawing realistically show the local processing bias seen in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Twenty-seven 6-12 year-olds made an observational drawing (scored for level of realism) and completed three local processing tasks, and parents completed the Childhood…

Aim: Individuals with congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis (CIPA) are reported to have mental retardation but to our knowledge no detailed study on the subject has ever been published. The present study assessed and documented cognitive and adaptive behaviour among Arab Bedouin children with CIPA. Methods: Twenty-three Arab Bedouin…

Parents with intellectual disabilities (PID) are overrepresented in the child protective services (CPS) system. This study examined a more nuanced view of the role of cognition in parenting risk. Its goal was to validate a social information processing (SIP) model of child neglect that draws on social cognition research and advances in…

We studied the age-related differences in inspection time and multiple cognitive domains in a group of monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twins aged 7 to 17 years. Data from 111 twin pairs and 19 singleton siblings were included. We found clear age-related trends towards more efficient visual information processing in older participants. There…