Goals: This study examined: (a) crystallized/fluid intelligence trajectories of adolescents and adults with Down syndrome; and (b) the contribution of endogenous (health, activities of daily living--ADL) and exogenous (cognitively stimulating leisure activities) factors on adults' intelligence with age. Method: Four cohorts (N = 80) with Down…

Intellectual impairments in preschoolers have been widely studied. A regularity that emerges is that children's intellectual impairments have an important impact on later adjustments in life. However, few studies have looked at the intellectual profiles of young psychiatric outpatients. This study aimed to describe the intelligence profile of…

The present study examined the relationships between the standardized applied behavior analysis (ABA) direct assessment, the PEAK Comprehensive Assessment (PCA), and established assessments commonly used in educational and clinical settings, including the Childhood Autism Rating Scale - Third Edition (CARS-3), the PDD Behavior Inventory (PDDBI),…

Objective: This study aimed to investigate the current status of cognitive development and central auditory processing development of preschool children with minimal and mild hearing loss (MMHL) in Nanjing, China. Method: We recruited 34 children with MMHL and 45 children with normal hearing (NH). They completed a series of tests, including…

This study investigated the prospective relationship between preschoolers' theory of mind (ToM) skills and academic school readiness, while exploring the possible moderator role played by child gender. The participants were 75 children who were assessed at two time points: when enrolled in the second preschool year (T1) and again 4 months before…

The current prospective cohort study investigated whether early perceptual abilities, measured at preschool age, could predict later intellectual abilities at school age in a group of 41 autistic (9 girls, 32 boys) and 57 neurotypical children (29 girls, 28 boys). More than 80% of the autistic children were considered minimally verbal.…

Previous research showed that in primary school, children's intelligence develops continually, but creativity develops more irregularly. In this study, the development of intelligence, measured traditionally, i.e., operating within well-defined problem spaces (Standard Progressive Matrices) was compared with the development of intelligence…

Process overlap theory (POT) is a new theoretical framework designed to account for the general factor of intelligence ("g"). According to POT, g does not reflect a general cognitive ability. Instead, "g" is the result of multiple domain-general executive attention processes and multiple domain-specific processes that are…

The aim of the study was to understand the components associated with the types of perfectionism described as adaptive/healthy, maladaptive/unhealthy or non-perfectionism, which could offer positive or negative aspects to improve excellence and welfare, exploring the number and content of the latent perfectionism structure as a multidimensional…

The evidence for negative influences of maternal stress during pregnancy on child cognition remains inconclusive. This study tested the association between maternal prenatal stress and child intelligence in 4,251 mother-child dyads from a multiethnic population-based cohort in the Netherlands. A latent factor of prenatal stress was constructed,…

Purpose: Transcription of conjoined independent clauses within language samples varies across professionals. Some transcribe these clauses as two separate utterances, whereas others conjoin them within a single utterance. As an inquiry into equitable practice, we examined rates of conjoined independent clauses produced by children and the impact…

This Special Issue on linguistic and cognitive development in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) arose from the 42nd Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD) (2017), when Jeannette Schaeffer, Stephanie Durrleman, and Inge-Marie Eigsti organized a symposium on this topic. It shows that the study of language development…

Background: Multiple perspectives on cognitive development, including Cattell's Investment Theory (1963, 1987), suggest that fluid reasoning (Gf) is foundational to the development of academic knowledge and skills. Yet little is known of the role that Gf may play in reading achievement, particularly in comparison with a larger literature…

A wealth of literature has examined the association between breastfeeding and the development of cognitive abilities in childhood. In particular, at least some evidence exists suggesting that breastfed children perform better on measures of intelligence later in life. Although a correlation appears to be present, fewer observational studies have…

Purpose: This study investigates the heritability of language, speech, and nonverbal cognitive development of twins at 4 and 6 years of age. Possible confounding effects of twinning and zygosity, evident at 2 years, were investigated among other possible predictors of outcomes. Method: The population-based twin sample included 627 twin pairs and 1…