Adolescents who break the law have experienced situations that increase the likelihood of becoming involved in criminal activities such as drug use, gang involvement, adverse economic conditions, among others. All this, added to their stage of human development, which is characterized by physical, cognitive, social and emotional changes, can lead…

The aim of the paper was to study the intellectual profile of 94 gifted elders aged 60-90 years old with an IQ equal to or higher than 130 on at least one of the four primary indexes of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale -- Fourth Edition. Their performances in the 15 subtests, in the Full Scale Intelligence Quotient, in the primary,…

Anxiety alters how we perceive the world and can alter aspects of cognitive performance. Prominent theories of anxiety suggest that the effect of anxiety on cognition is due to anxious thoughts "overloading" limited cognitive resources, competing with other processes. If this is so, then a cognitive load manipulation should impact…

Background: Executive functions (EF) impairments have long been observed in children and youths with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Until very recently, little attention has been paid to examine EF profiles of adults with ASD. Given the importance of EF to cope with the demands of daily life and participate in society (e.g. maintaining an…

Yaqona (kava) is a culturally significant, non-alcoholic drink consumed nightly by many Fijians. Although yaqona is not consumed by primary or secondary school students, cultural protocols related to yaqona preparation and presentation are often taught in their schools, with students then presenting this indigenous drink to acknowledge visitors to…

Rules and regularities of language are typically processed in an implicit and effortless way in the human brain. Individuals with developmental dyslexia have problems in implicit learning of regularities in sequential stimuli, but the neural basis of this deficit has not been studied. This study investigated extraction and utilization of a complex…

Autistic people experience social communication difficulties alongside specific memory difficulties than impact their ability to recall episodic events. Police interviewing techniques do not take account of these differences, and so are often ineffective. Here we introduce a novel Witness-Aimed First Account interview technique, designed to better…

Effectiveness of individual and group-based neuropsychological interventions on cognitive aspects of dyslexia in young adults was evaluated. Dyslexic adults were randomly assigned into individual intervention (n = 40), group intervention (n = 40), or wait-list control group (n = 40). The interventions focused on cognitive strategy learning,…

Background: The goal of this study was to examine the relationship between drinking motives and interpretation bias (interpreting ambiguous stimuli in an alcohol-related way) in problematic drinkers with and without mild to borderline intellectual disability (MBID). Method: Participants (N = 178) were divided into 4 groups based on severity of…

Adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show intact recognition (supported procedure) but impaired recall (unsupported procedure) of incidentally-encoded context. Because this has not been demonstrated for temporal source, we compared the temporal and spatial source memory of adults with ASD and verbally matched typical adults. Because of…

In a Yes/No object recognition memory test with similar lures, older adults typically exhibit elevated rates of false recognition. However, the contributions of impaired retrieval, relative to reduced availability of target details, are difficult to disentangle using such a test. The present investigation sought to decouple these factors by…

The Vygotsky Blocks Test assesses problem-solving styles within a theoretical framework for the development of higher mental processes devised by Vygotsky. Because both the theory and the associated test situate cognitive development within the child's social and linguistic context, they address conceptual issues around the developmental relation…

The complex interplay of education, age, and cognitive performance on various neuropsychological tests is examined in the current study. New education indices were formulated and further investigated to reveal how age and education variances work together to account for performance on neuropsychological tests. Participants were 830…

Having a sense of purpose is recognized as an important resource for maintaining health and well-being over the life span. We examined associations of individual differences in sense of purpose with levels and rates of change in indices of aging well (health, cognition, and depressive symptoms) in a sample of 1,475 older adults (M[subscript age] =…

Background: Many hypotheses have been proposed to address the relationship between sex offenders and neuropsychological functions. Method: The purpose of this study was to evaluate differences in executive functions between juvenile sex offenders and non-sex offenders with/without low IQ by using the Behavioural Assessment of the Dysexecutive…