Previous studies measuring praxis abilities in young autistic children have only used praxis measures that were not optimised for autistic individuals. Hence, we used the FAB-R to measure praxis skills in autistic (n = 38) and typically developing (TD) children (n = 38) aged between four and 10 years. Praxis abilities were generally not different…

This study aimed to evaluate spatial function in subjects with Williams syndrome (WS) by using a large-scale task with multiple rewards and comparing the spatial abilities of WS subjects with those of mental age-matched control children. In the present spatial task, WS participants had to explore an open space to search nine rewards placed in…

Hemispherectomy (disconnection or removal of an entire cerebral hemisphere) is a rare surgical procedure used for the relief of drug-resistant epilepsy in children. After hemispherectomy, contralateral hemiplegia persists whereas gross expressive and receptive language functions can be remarkably spared. Motor speech deficits have rarely been…

Background: Previous theories implicate hippocampal dysfunction in anxiety disorders. Most of the data supporting these theories stem from animal research, particularly lesion studies. The generalization of findings from rodent models to human function is hampered by fundamental inter-species differences. The present work uses a task of spatial…

One of the most extensively investigated topics in the adult memory literature, dual memory processes, has had virtually no impact on the study of early memory development. The authors remove the key obstacles to such research by formulating a trichotomous theory of recall that combines the traditional dual processes of recollection and…

In this study, 22 children with early left hemisphere (LHD) or right hemisphere (RHD) focal brain lesions (FL, n=14 LHD, n=8 RHD) were administered an English past tense elicitation test (M=6.5 years). Proportion correct and frequency of overregularization and zero-marking errors were compared to age-matched samples of children with specific…

This study explored differences among 10 children with Central Auditory Processing Disorder (CAPD), 10 age-matched peers, and 10 young adults, by examining vocal reaction time when presented with printed one- and two-syllable words. Children with CAPD produced significantly more errors than their peers or adults, specifically for long-delay…

Changes in consonant and syllable-level error patterns of three children diagnosed with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) were investigated in a 3-year longitudinal study. Spontaneous speech samples were analyzed to assess the accuracy of consonants and syllables. Consonant accuracy was low overall, with most frequent errors on middle- and…

Background: Williams syndrome (WS) and Down syndrome (DS) are two neurodevelopmental genetically based disorders which exhibit mental retardation with a unique cognitive profile. Naming in individuals with WS and DS has been investigated in several studies, with results indicating that the performance of children with WS and DS is at a similar…