Individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are more likely to have suicidal thoughts and behaviors. However, little research delineates the temporal and mechanistic associations between potential risk factors and suicidality in autistic individuals. We assessed 129 autistic and 121 age-matched and sex-assigned-at-birth-matched…

There is no relationship more vital than the one a child shares with their primary caregivers early in development. Yet many children worldwide are raised in settings that lack the warmth, connection, and stimulation provided by a responsive primary caregiver. In this study, we used data from the Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP), a…

Autistic people have difficulties recalling episodic memories, including retrieving fewer or less specific and detailed memories compared to typically developing people. However, the ability to effectively recall episodic memories is crucial in many real-world contexts, such as the criminal justice system, medical consultations, and employment…

The present study presents the first attempt at investigating long-term mindfulness training in pre-adolescence, adopting an integrative neurodevelopmental approach. Pupils with an established mindfulness practice (n=33) were compared with mindfulness-inexperienced pupils (n=20) on dispositional mindfulness, executive functioning (EF), emotion…

Whereas executive functions are known to be closely tied to successful language processing in children and younger adults, less is known about how age-related decline in these functions affects language processing in elderly adults. Because the abilities to use linguistic context and resolve potential ambiguities such as between an idiom's…

A novel battery (BAFE; Valeri et al. 2015) was used in order to assess three executive function (EF) abilities (working memory, inhibition and shifting) in a sample of 27 intellectually able preschoolers with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) compared with 27 typically developing children matched on age and nonverbal IQ. Differences in EF skills were…

Conflict adaptation is key in how children self-regulate and assert cognitive control in a given situation compared with a previous experience. In the current study, we analyzed event-related potentials (ERPs) to identify age-related differences in conflict adaptation. Participants of different ages (5-year-old children, 10-year-old children, and…

Little is known about the relation between cognitive processes and imagination and whether this relation differs between neurotypically developing children and children with autism. To address this issue, we administered a cognitive task battery and Karmiloff-Smith's drawing task, which requires children to draw imaginative people and houses. For…

This study investigates the relationship between visual attention and reading time using a mobile electroencephalography device. The mobile electroencephalography device uses a single channel dry sensor, which easily measures participants' attention in the real-world reading environment. The results reveal that age significantly influences visual…

Background: Autism is generally associated with poor functional outcome but little is known about predictors of quality of life, especially during early adulthood. This study was conducted to assess subjective quality of life during early adulthood in high-functioning autism spectrum disorder and its relation with self-regulating abilities.…

In order to achieve the present study's goal--to understand better the phenomenon of mathematical giftedness--we performed a multidimensional examination of the mental processing in students who exhibited mathematical expertise (EM) at the secondary school level. The study included participants from the three groups: students who excelled in…

This study examined the contribution of executive functioning (EF) to improvements in psychiatric symptomatology following I Can Succeed (ICS; Kopelman-Rubin, 2012) psychotherapy, a skill-enhancement intervention designed to target EF and socio-emotional aspects of specific learning disabilities (SLD). Forty adolescents with SLD underwent ICS in…

Decision making, a complex mental activity underlying the act of choosing from among the alternatives in attaining a goal constitutes the core component of planning, a higher order cognitive process as per the PASS theory of intelligence. An attempt, therefore, has been made in the present study to examine the development of planning behaviour in…

Background: Neuroimaging findings have provided evidence for a relation between variations in brain structures and Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). However, longitudinal neuroimaging studies are typically confined to children who have already been diagnosed with ADHD. In a population-based study, we aimed to characterize the…

Writing difficulties are common among children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), but the nature of these difficulties has not been well studied. Here we relate behavioral, psycholinguistic, cognitive (memory/executive), and graphomotor measures to spelling skills in school-age girls with ADHD (n = 30) and an age-matched group…