Background: It is well-established that children and adolescents with developmental language disorder (DLD) have social-emotional difficulties. This is reflected in their behaviour, for instance, by (social) withdrawal, hyperactivity or difficulty with peer relations. Children with DLD are also known to have poorer quality of life (QoL). This is…

Negation is a universal component of human language; polarity sensitivity (i.e., lexical distributional constraints in relation to negation) is arguably so while being pervasive across languages. Negation has long been a field of inquiry in psychological theories and experiments of reasoning, which inspired many follow-up studies of negation and…

Introduction: Children and young adults with Down syndrome can demonstrate increased behavior problems compared to their typically developing peers through childhood and adolescence. This study aims to: (1) identify common patterns of behaviors in children and young adults with Down syndrome and (2) assess potential medical comorbidities that…

Background: Changes in reward processing are thought to be involved in the etiology of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), as well as other developmental disorders. In addition, different forms of therapy for ADHD rely on reinforcement principles. As such, improved understanding of reward processing in ADHD could eventually lead to…

Background: While associations between conduct disorder (CD), oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and interpersonal callousness (IC) symptoms and delinquency onset are well established, less is known about whether these characteristics differentiate desisting and persisting delinquency. The current…

Objective: The study investigates behavioural, academic, cognitive, and motivational aspects of functioning in school-age children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) with and without an executive function deficit (EFD). Method: Children with ADHD - EFD (n = 22) and children with ADHD + EFD (n = 26) were compared on aspects of…

Seven hyperactive children in a pilot study, and 15 hyperactive and 15 nonhyperactive control children in a later study, were assessed for salivation to lemon juice stimulation, reactive inhibition on an audio-vigilance task, and visual-motor maze errors. (Author)

It was found that brain damaged children were more active in structured situations and more distractibile than control group children. These findings pointed to a deficiency in control mechanisms. The correlational data suggested the manner in which these deficiences operate. Sex differences were also discussed. (Author/CG)

Although previous research indicates that certain types of attention (i.e., statements related to behavior, tickles) may be differentially reinforcing, only one or two forms of attention are typically provided contingent on problem behavior during the attention condition in experimental functional analyses. In the present investigation, various…

Investigated with 18 hyperactive boys (5 to 12 years old) and 18 controls were the effects of methylphenidate on a number of objective measures of activity level and attention on three repeated occasions in four types of settings: free play, movie viewing, testing, and restricted play periods. (Author/SBH)

The article describes an observational playroom procedure (Structured Observation of Academic and Play Settings) used for evaluating symptomatic behaviors of hyperactive boys in the clinic setting. Case studies are presented to illustrate the differing pattern of playroom behavior in boys with different types of externalizing disorders. (Author/DB)

Background: To assess the co-occurrence in deviant trajectories of parent-rated symptoms of conduct disorder (CD), oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) from age 4 to 18 years old in a general population sample of Dutch children. Methods: Developmental trajectories of CD, ODD, and ADHD were…

This study investigates physiological arousal and overt behaviors of hyperactive children in comparison with nonhyperactive children. It was predicted from Farley's (1974) theory of hyperactivity that hyperactive children would exhibit lower arousal and a stronger stimulation-seeking motive than nonhyperactive children. Four measures of…

It is maintained that two weaknesses of current theories on etiology of learning disabilities are reliance on a single-cause model and assumption of a child's deficit; advanced is the explanation that defensive hyperactivity is a coping device of children who are anxious about forming relationships with others, particularly adults. (MC)

A behavior problem checklist was administered to the teachers of six to eight year old children. Eight factors were identified as Hyperactivity, Disciplinary Problems, Sluggishness, Paranoiac Tendencies, Social Withdrawal, Acting Out, Speech Problems; and Antisocial Tendencies. Three second order factors were identified as Neutroticism,…