Developmental dyslexia (DD) is defined as difficulties in learning to read even with normal intelligence and adequate educational guidance. Deficits in implicit sequence learning (ISL) abilities have been reported in children with DD. We investigated brain plasticity in a group of 17 children with DD, compared with 18 typically developing (TD)…

The development of the ability to anticipate--as manifested by preparatory actions and neural activation related to the expectation of an upcoming stimulus--may play a key role in the ontogeny of cognitive skills more broadly. This preregistered study examined anticipatory brain potentials and behavioral responses (reaction time; RT) to…

A number of training interventions have been designed to improve executive functions and inhibitory control (IC) across the lifespan. Surprisingly, no study has investigated the structural neuroplasticity induced by IC training from childhood to late adolescence, a developmental period characterized by IC efficiency improvement and protracted…

While age effects in reaction time (RT) tasks across the lifespan are well established for level of performance, analogous findings have started appearing also for indicators of intra-individual variability (IIV). Children are not only slower, but also display more variability than younger adults in RT. Yet, little is known about potential…

Conflict adaptation is key in how children self-regulate and assert cognitive control in a given situation compared with a previous experience. In the current study, we analyzed event-related potentials (ERPs) to identify age-related differences in conflict adaptation. Participants of different ages (5-year-old children, 10-year-old children, and…

Previous research suggests that individuals with developmental dyslexia perform below typical readers on non-linguistic cognitive tasks involving the learning and encoding of statistical-sequential patterns. However, the neural mechanisms underlying such a deficit have not been well examined. The aim of the present study was to investigate the…

This study reports the neurophysiological and behavioral correlates of digital memory retrieval features in Chinese individuals with and without dyscalculia. A total of 18 children with dyscalculia (ages 11.5-13.5) and 18 controls were tested, and their event-related potentials were digitally recorded simultaneously with behavior measurement.…

This study aimed to compare children's performance on two mnemonic functions that engage the lateral prefrontal cortex. Brain imaging studies in adults have shown that the mid-ventrolateral prefrontal cortex is specifically involved in active controlled retrieval, and the mid-dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is specifically involved in monitoring…

The "automatic letter-sound integration hypothesis" (Blomert, [Blomert, L., 2011]) proposes that dyslexia results from a failure to fully integrate letters and speech sounds into automated audio-visual objects. We tested this hypothesis in a sample of English-speaking children with dyslexic difficulties (N = 13) and samples of…

This study examines whether deficits in visual information processing in autism-spectrum disorder (ASD) can be offset by the recruitment of brain structures involved in selective attention. During functional MRI, 12 children with ASD and 19 control participants completed a selective attention one-back task in which images of faces and houses were…

In light of the adult model of a hemispheric asymmetry of global and local processing, we compared children (M [subscript age] = 8.4 years) to adults in a global-local reaction time (RT) paradigm. Hierarchical designs (large shapes made of small shapes) were presented randomly to each visual field, and participants were instructed to identify…

Background: Intraindividual variability in reaction times (RT variability) has garnered increasing interest as an indicator of cognitive and neurobiological dysfunction in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Recent theory and research has emphasized specific low-frequency patterns of RT variability. However, whether…

In the majority of people, functional differences are observed between the two cerebral hemispheres: language production is typically subserved by the left hemisphere and visuospatial skills by the right hemisphere. The development of this division of labour is not well understood and lateralisation of visuospatial function has received little…

Background: This longitudinal electrophysiological study investigated the course of multiple impaired cognitive brain functions in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) from childhood to adulthood by comparing developmental trajectories of individuals with ADHD and typically developing controls. Methods: Subjects with ADHD ("N"…

Throughout middle-childhood, inhibitory processes, which underlie many higher order cognitive tasks, are developing. Little is known about how inhibitory processes change as a task becomes conceptually more difficult during these important years. In adults, as Go/NoGo tasks become more difficult there is a systematic decrease in the P3 NoGo…