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Non-verbal Intelligence (non-verbal + intelligence)
Selected AbstractsCognitive visual dysfunctions in preterm children with periventricular leukomalaciaDEVELOPMENTAL MEDICINE & CHILD NEUROLOGY, Issue 12 2009ELISA FAZZI MD PHD Aim, Cognitive visual dysfunctions (CVDs) reflect an impairment of the capacity to process visual information. The question of whether CVDs might be classifiable according to the nature and distribution of the underlying brain damage is an intriguing one in child neuropsychology. Method, We studied 22 children born preterm (12 males, 10 females; mean age at examination 8y, range 6,15y; mean gestational age 30wks, range 28,36wks) with periventricular leukomalacia, spastic diplegia, normal intelligence (mean Full-scale IQ 84; mean Verbal IQ 97; mean Performance IQ 74), and normal visual acuity, focusing on higher visual functions. Brain magnetic resonance images (MRI) were analysed to establish the presence of lesions along the primary optic pathway, in the occipitoparietal and occipitotemporal regions. Results, Most children displayed an uneven cognitive profile, with deficits in visual object recognition, visual imagery, visual,spatial skills, and visual memory, and sparing of visual associative abilities, non-verbal intelligence, and face and letter recognition. Conventional brain MRI did not document major alterations of parietal and temporal white matter, or cortical alteration of areas involved in visual associative functions. Interpretation, We suggest a widespread involvement of higher visual processing systems, involving both the ventral and dorsal streams, in preterm children with periventricular leukomalacia. The lack of major alterations on conventional MRI does not exclude the possibility of malfunctioning of higher visual processing systems, expressing itself through discrete CVDs. Possible mechanisms underlying these neuropsychological deficits are discussed. [source] Maternal fever at birth and non-verbal intelligence at age 9 years in preterm infantsDEVELOPMENTAL MEDICINE & CHILD NEUROLOGY, Issue 3 2003Olaf Dammann MD MS To test the hypothesis that characteristics of perinatal infection are associated with long-term cognitive limitations among preterm infants, we analyzed data from 294 infants (142 females, 152 males) ,1500g birthweight and <37 completed weeks of gestation who were examined at age 9 years. We identified 47 children (20 females, 27 males) who had a non-verbal Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC) scale standard value below 70, i.e. more than 2 SDs below the age-adjusted mean. The 247 children (122 females, 125 males) with a score ,70 served as control participants. Maternal nationality and education, and low gestational age were significantly associated with a K-ABC non-verbal standard value <70. Both neonatal brain damage (intraventricular hemorrhage) and long-term sequelae (cerebral palsy [CP], diagnosed at age 6 years) were significantly associated with a below-normal non-verbal K-ABC score. Maternal fever at birth was present in five cases (11%) and eight controls (3%; odds ratio 3.6, 95% confidence interval 1.1 to 11.4). Clinical chorioamnionitis and preterm labor and/or premature rupture of membranes (as opposed to toxemia and other initiators of preterm delivery) were also more common among cases than control participants. When adjusting for potential confounders such as gestational age, maternal education and nationality, and CP, the risk estimate for maternal fever remained unchanged (3.8, 0.97 to 14.6). We conclude that perinatal infection might indeed contribute to an increased risk for long-term cognitive deficits in preterm infants. [source] The role of sensorimotor impairments in dyslexia: a multiple case study of dyslexic childrenDEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE, Issue 3 2006Sarah White This study attempts to investigate the role of sensorimotor impairments in the reading disability that characterizes dyslexia. Twenty-three children with dyslexia were compared to 22 control children, matched for age and non-verbal intelligence, on tasks assessing literacy as well as phonological, visual, auditory and motor abilities. The dyslexic group as a whole were significantly impaired on phonological, but not sensorimotor, tasks. Analysis of individual data suggests that the most common impairments were on phonological and visual stress tasks and the vast majority of dyslexics had one of these two impairments. Furthermore, phonological skill was able to account for variation in literacy skill, to the exclusion of all sensorimotor factors, while neither auditory nor motor skill predicted any variance in phonological skill. Visual stress seems to account for a small proportion of dyslexics, independently of the commonly reported phonological deficit. However, there is little evidence for a causal role of auditory, motor or other visual impairments. [source] Phonological and orthographic spelling in high-functioning adult dyslexicsDYSLEXIA, Issue 2 2009Nenagh Kemp Abstract Despite a history of reading or spelling difficulties, some adults attain age-appropriate spelling skills and succeed at university. We compared the spelling of 29 such high-functioning dyslexics with that of 28 typical students, matched on general spelling ability, and controlling for vocabulary and non-verbal intelligence. Participants wrote derived real and pseudo words, whose spelling relationship to their base forms was categorized as phonologically simple (apt-aptly), orthographically simple (deceit-deceitful), phonologically complex (ash-ashen), or orthographically complex (plenty-plentiful). Dyslexic participants spelled all word and pseudoword categories more poorly than controls. Both groups spelled simple phonological words best. Dyslexics were particularly poor at spelling simple orthographic words, whose letter patterns and rules must likely be memorized. In contrast, dyslexics wrote more plausible spellings of orthographic than phonological pseudowords, but this might be an artefact of their more variable spelling attempts. These results suggest that high-functioning dyslexics make some use of phonological skills to spell familiar words, but they have difficulty in memorizing orthographic patterns, which makes it difficult to spell unfamiliar words consistently in the absence of sufficient phonological cues or orthographic rules. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Core neuropsychological characteristics of children and adolescents with 22q11.2 deletionJOURNAL OF INTELLECTUAL DISABILITY RESEARCH, Issue 8 2010C. Jacobson Abstract Background The 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22qDS) confers high risk for intellectual disability and neuropsychological/academic impairment, although a minority of patients show average intelligence. Intellectual heterogeneity and the high prevalence of psychiatric diagnoses in earlier studies may have obscured the prototypical neuropsychological profile in 22qDS. Methods We examined intelligence, memory, reading and mathematical processes in 31 children/adolescents with 22qDS, selected for educational underachievement and an absence of psychiatric diagnoses, using standardised, psychometrically matched instruments that specify how typical a score is for a given intelligence quotient (IQ). Results Corroborating earlier findings, verbal IQ was significantly superior to performance IQ; verbal memory and basic reading were relative strengths; and visual/spatial memory was a relative weakness. All four findings transcended performance characteristics that are typical of low-IQ individuals. Rote learning yielded the highest score; reading comprehension, numerical operations and mathematical reasoning were among the lowest-performed academic domains. Albeit in the expected direction, performance in the respective components could not be clearly differentiated from what is IQ-appropriate. Conclusions A superiority of verbal intelligence over non-verbal intelligence, relative strengths in verbal memory and basic reading, and a relative weakness in visual/spatial memory are likely to be core characteristics of children/adolescents with 22qDS, transcending performance features that are typical of individuals with low IQ. [source] | |||||||||||||