Background: Children with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) experience heightened attention difficulties which have been linked to poorer cognitive, academic and social outcomes. Although, increasing research has focused on the potential of computerised cognitive training in reducing attention problems, limited studies have…

Background: Elucidating risk pathways for under-achieving at school can inform strategies to reduce the number of adolescents leaving school without passing grades in core subjects. Maternal depression can compromise the quality of parental care and is associated with multiple negative child outcomes. However, only a few small studies have…

Background: Children reared in deprived environments, such as institutions for the care of orphaned or abandoned children, are at increased risk for attention and behavior regulation difficulties. This study examined the neurobehavioral correlates of executive attention in post institutionalized (PI) children. Methods: The performance and…

Background: We may improve our understanding of the role of common versus unique risk factors in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) by examining ADHD-related cognitive deficits in single- (SPX), and multi-incidence (MPX) families. Given that individuals from multiplex (MPX) families are likely to share genetic vulnerability for the…

Background: Attention biases toward threat are often detected in individuals with anxiety disorders. Threat biases can be measured experimentally through dot-probe paradigms, in which individuals detect a probe following a stimulus pair including a threat. On these tasks, individuals with anxiety tend to detect probes that occur in a location…

Background: Low levels of dispositional anger and a good attention span are critical to healthy social emotional development, with attention control reflecting effective cognitive self-regulation of negative emotions such as anger. Using a longitudinal design, we examined attention span as a moderator of reciprocal links between changes in anger…

Background: This study examined whether treatment response to stepped-care cognitive-behavioural treatment (CBT) is associated with changes in threat-related selective attention and its specific components in a large clinical sample of anxiety-disordered children. Methods: Ninety-one children with an anxiety disorder were included in the present…

Background: Developing control of attention helps infants to regulate their emotions, and individual differences in attention skills may shape how infants perceive and respond to their socio-emotional environments. This study examined whether the temperamental dimensions of self-regulation and negative emotionality relate to infants' attention…

Background: Children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are at high risk for developing significant anxiety. Anxiety can adversely impact functioning across school, home and community environments. Cognitive behavioral therapies (CBT) are frequently used with success for children with anxiety symptoms. Modified CBT interventions…

Background: Poor fear conditioning characterizes adult psychopathy and criminality, but it is not known whether it is related to aggressive/antisocial behavior in early childhood. Methods: Using a differential, partial reinforcement conditioning paradigm, electrodermal activity was recorded from 200 male and female children at ages 3, 4, 5, 6, and…

Background: Temperamental effortful control involves the voluntary control of attention and behavior. Deficits in effortful control put children at risk for developing externalizing behavior problems. Coparenting behavior, or the extent to which parents support or undermine each other's parenting efforts, has also been identified as an important…

Background: Inhibitory and attention deficits have been suggested to be shared problems of disruptive behaviour disorders. Patients with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and patients with conduct disorder (CD) show deficits in tasks of attention allocation and interference inhibition. However, functional magnetic resonance imaging…

Background: Chronic prenatal alcohol exposure causes a spectrum of deleterious effects in offspring, collectively termed fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD), and deficits in executive function are prevalent in FASD. The goal of this research was to test the hypothesis that children with FASD exhibit performance deficits in tasks that assess…

Background: The Child Behavior Checklist Juvenile Bipolar Disorder (CBCL-JBD) profile and Posttraumatic Stress Problems (CBCL-PTSP) scale have been used to assess juvenile bipolar disorder (JBD) and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), respectively. However, their validity is questionable according to previous research. Both measures are…

Background: Individual differences in conduct problems arise in part from proneness to anger/frustration and poor self-regulation of behavior. However, the genetic and environmental etiology of these connections is not known. Method: Using a twin design, we examined genetic and environmental covariation underlying the well-documented correlations…