Poor sleep is a common feature in autism even though patients themselves do not necessarily complain. The impact of poor sleep on daytime cognitive functioning in autism is not well-known and we therefore investigated whether sleep in autism correlates with daytime cognitive performance. A battery of non-verbal tasks was administered, in the…

The present study examined the link between brain hemisphericity and dyslexia in secondary school students, using the Preference Test (PT), a widely used self-report index of preferred hemisphere thinking styles. The hypothesis was that differences would be revealed between the dyslexic group and their peers in hemispheric preference. A total of…

The current research aimed to clarify the influence of age, intelligence and executive control function on the central tendency and intraindividual variability of saccadic reaction time in persons with intellectual disabilities. Participants were 44 persons with intellectual disabilities aged between 13 and 57 years whose IQs were between 14 and…

The primary purpose of this study was to investigate and compare the executive functions measured by the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) between children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) and age-matched normal controls. A second purpose was to examine the relations between executive functions and school functions in DCD children.…

The current study adopts the PASS theory of information processing to investigate the probable differences in specific motor and cognitive abilities between children with and without developmental coordination disorder (DCD). Participants were 108 5- and 6-year-old preschoolers (54 children with DCD and 54 children without DCD). The Movement…

Similar to many sighted children who struggle with learning to read, a proportion of blind children have specific difficulties related to reading braille which cannot be easily explained. A lot of research has been conducted to investigate the perceptual and cognitive processes behind (impairments in) print reading. Very few studies, however, have…

It is generally assumed that children with intellectual disabilities (ID) have an increased risk of impaired visual information processing due to brain damage or brain development disorder. So far little evidence has been presented to support this assumption. Abnormal visual orienting behavior is a sensitive tool to evaluate impaired visual…

Objective: This study examines relations between the severity of specific symptoms of schizophrenia spectrum disorder (SSD) and severity of the three defining symptom domains of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in children with ASD (N = 147) and child psychiatry outpatient referrals (Controls; N = 339). Method: Participants were subdivided into four…

The objectives of this study were to describe the nature of the attention deficits in children with Neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) in comparison with typically developing (TD) children, using the Virtual Classroom (VC), and to assess the utility of this instrument for detecting attention deficits. Twenty-nine NF1 children and 25 age-and…

Studies into the effects of ageing on language in adults with Down syndrome (DS) have tended to rely on measures that lack sensitivity to change because they fail to explore across linguistic domains or rely on proxy reports. The study aim was to use measures of receptive and expressive language from studies of younger individuals with DS in…

Williams syndrome (WS), a genetic neurodevelopmental disorder due to microdeletion in chromosome 7, has been described as a syndrome with an intriguing socio-cognitive phenotype. Cognitively, the relative preservation of language and face processing abilities coexists with severe deficits in visual-spatial tasks, as well as in tasks involving…

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are a class of conditions categorized by communication problems, ritualistic behaviors, and inappropriate social behaviors. While there is much evidence to support a genetic link for ASD, an identified genetic marker remains elusive. As such, practitioners place considerable emphasis on traditional measures of…

Few studies have specifically investigated the cognitive correlates of employment for persons with mental retardation. To evaluate the relationship of cognitive and adaptive functioning to work status, 56 competitively employed and 55 unemployed individuals with mental retardation underwent a comprehensive neuropsychological and adaptive…