Williams (WS) and Down (DS) syndromes are characterised by roughly opposing ability profiles. Relative verbal strengths and visuospatial difficulties have been reported in those with WS, while expressive language difficulties have been observed in individuals with DS. Few investigations into the executive function (EF) skills of these groups have…

Executive functions are a set of high cognitive abilities that control and regulate other functions and behaviors and are crucial for successful adaptation. Deficits in executive functions are frequently described in developmental disorders, which are characterized by disadaptive behavior. However, executive functions are not widely examined in…

Deficits in short-term memory are common in adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), but their current ADHD symptoms cannot well predict their short-term performance. Taking a developmental perspective, we wanted to clarify the association between ADHD symptoms at early childhood and short-term memory in late childhood and…

Sleep problems associated with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have been well documented, but less is known about the effects of sleep problems on day-time cognitive and adaptive performance in this population. Children diagnosed with autism or pervasive developmental disorder-not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS) (N = 335) from 1 to 10 years of age…

The cognitive profile of individuals with Down syndrome (DS) is known to be characterized by an impaired executive functioning, but inhibition-related processes have not been extensively examined in this setting. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether individuals with DS have any specific or general deficit in inhibitory…

The objective of this study was to investigate the psycholinguistic abilities of children with Williams syndrome (WS) and typically developing children using the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities (ITPA). Performance on the ITPA was analysed in a group with WS (N=20, mean age=8.5 years, SD=1.62) and two typically developing groups,…

Memory and language operate in synergy. Recent literature stresses the importance of memory functioning in interpreting language deficits. Two groups of 50 children each, ages 8-12 were studied. The first group included children with specific language impairment, while the participants in the second group were typically developing children. The…

Children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) have deficits in working memory, but little is known about the everyday memory of these children in real-life situations. We investigated the everyday memory function in children with DCD, and explored the specific profile of everyday memory across different domains. Nineteen children with…

Reading-related skills of youth with intellectual disability (ID) were compared with those of typically developing (TD) children of similar verbal ability level. The group with ID scored lower than the TD group on word recognition and phonological decoding, but similarly on orthographic processing and rapid automatized naming (RAN). Further,…

The behavioural phenotype of velocardiofacial syndrome (VCFS), one of the most common human multiple anomaly syndromes, includes developmental disabilities, frequently including intellectual disability (ID) and high risk of diagnosis of psychotic disorders including schizophrenia. VCFS may offer a model of the relationship between ID and risk of…

The aim of the present study was to investigate executive functions in adults with intellectual disability, and compare them to a closely matched control group longitudinally for 5 years. In the Betula database, a group of adults with intellectual disability (ID, n = 46) was defined from measures of verbal and non-verbal IQ. A control group, with…

Specific language impairment (SLI) is usually defined as a developmental language disorder which does not result from a hearing loss, autism, neurological and emotional difficulties, severe social deprivation, low non-verbal abilities. Children affected with SLI typically have difficulties with the acquisition of different aspects of language and…

Performance on three verbal measures (story recall, paired associated learning, category fluency) designed to assess the integration of long-term semantic and linguistic knowledge, phonological working memory and executive resources within the proposed "episodic buffer" of working memory (Baddeley, 2007) was assessed in children with intellectual…

Patterns of development of ToM-emotion abilities in intellectually disabled (ID) children and typically developing (TD) children matched on their developmental age were investigated. The links between cognition, language, social understanding and ToM-emotion abilities were examined. EDEI-R (Perron-Borelli, M. (1996). "Echelles Differentielles…

Background: Social desirability has been construed as either inaccurately attributing positive characteristics to oneself (self-deception), or inaccurately denying that one possesses undesirable characteristics to others (other-deception or impression management). These conceptualisations of social desirability have not been considered in relation…