Behaviour problems in Chinese primary school children

Purpose  

This study aimed to determine levels of behaviour problem in primary school children, and to explore key determinants relevant to the Chinese context: being an only child, urban living, school stressors, being bullied and physical punishment.     

Behaviour problems and cortisol levels in very-low-birth-weight children

Abstract

Background. There are still diverging results concerning the behaviour of children with very-low-birth-weight (VLBW) and they have been questioned to display different levels of stress hormone than normal-birth-weight (NBW) children. Aims. This study examined behaviour and the stress hormone cortisol in children with VLBW at the ages of 7 and 9 years compared with children with NBW. Results. Fifty-one VLBW and 50 NBW children were studied with the Child Behavior Checklist. Cortisol rhythm was measured through saliva samples three times a day for 2 days. VLBW children displayed more behavioural problems than NBW children, specifically social and attention problems, although still within normal ranges. They showed lower cortisol levels both at 7 and 9 years of age. No strong association between behaviour and cortisol levels was shown. Conclusion. VLBW children display more behaviour problems compared with NBW children but both groups score are within the normal range. Down-regulation of their hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) function in terms of lower cortisol levels is also noted.     

Behaviour, attention and cognition in severe dyslexia

Information about coexisting problems in dyslexia may be vital for diagnostic and remedial procedures. There are few studies in this area, and to our knowledge none for the students in focus in this study. They all have phonological deficits and severely impaired reading abilities, in spite of prolonged educational remediation. The aim was to assess if these students have more behavioural/emotional problems than normal reading students. A clinical sample of 70 students, 59 males and 11 females, were compared to a normal reading control group. The groups were pair-wise matched on age, gender, cognitive level, and whether they lived in rural or urban areas. Mean age for the two groups was 150 months, and mean IQ scores approximately 100. Information on behaviour/emotions was obtained from parents, teachers and participants by means of the Child Behavior Checklist, Teacher's Report Form and Youth Self Report. The dyslexia group showed significantly more problems in all areas than the controls. This was reported from all three groups of informants. Parents reported most problems, internalizing behaviour for more than 50% of the participants and total problem behaviour for nearly 45%. Significantly more attention problems were also reported for the dyslexia group from all informants. Parents reported that nearly half the group demonstrated attention problems. Both groups of participants had more problems reported for those with IQ scores of 100 or lower. Further research is needed in this area, but the results clearly indicate that identifying additional behavioural/emotional problems may be imperative for students with severe reading problems.     

Minor neurological dysfunction in children with dyslexia

Aim To improve understanding of brain function in children with severe dyslexia in terms of minor neurological dysfunctions (MNDs). Method One hundred and four children (81 males, 23 females; age range 7–12y; mean age 9y 7mo, SD 1y 2mo;) with severe dyslexia (the presence of a Full‐scale IQ score of ≥85, retardation in single‐word or text reading of ≥2y), assessed in a department of dyslexia of a third‐level regional psychiatric centre, underwent a neurological examination according to Touwen and a multidisciplinary child psychiatric assessment. Special attention was paid to severity and type of MND. Data were compared with neurological morbidity data of children in the general population. Results Most children had MND (87%): 43% had simple MND, 44% complex MND. The incidence of MND was significantly higher (p<0.001) in the children with dyslexia than in the general population (simple MND 15%, complex MND 6%). Children with dyslexia showed especially fine manipulative disability and – to a lesser extent – mild dysfunction in muscle tone regulation and excessive presence of associated movements. A comorbid psychiatric syndrome was diagnosed in 66 children (63%): emotional disturbances (27%), adjustment disorder (42%), hyperkinetic disorder (15%), autism spectrum disorder (3%), specific disturbances of childhood not otherwise specified (13%). The neurological findings of children with dyslexia with and without psychiatric comorbidity were similar. Interpretation Our results demonstrate the importance of neurological and child psychiatric assessment in children with severe dyslexia. Our findings suggest that dysfunction of cortical structures plays a dominant role in dyslexia.     

Implicit learning deficit in children with developmental dyslexia

Several neuropsychological deficits have been reported as characteristic of the cognitive profile of dyslexic children. Phonological and visual processing are often impaired as well as auditory processing, attention and information processing speed. We investigated whether implicit learning, is impaired in dyslexic children and adolescents. Tests of implicit and declarative learning were administered to 18 clinically defined dyslexics and 18 similar age controls. Dyslexics showed a reduced learning rate in the implicit but not in the declarative task, suggesting a specific deficit of implicit learning. Although alternative hypothesis cannot be ruled out, considering that implicit learning is a cognitive function primarily processed by the cerebellum and that recent neurological and physiological data suggest a cerebellar dysfunction in dyslexia, the present results suggest an impairment of cerebellar system in reading disabilities.     

Behaviour problems in children and adolescents with seizure disorder: associations and risk factors.

PROBLEM: Fifty million people worldwide have epilepsy of whom 33 million are children. Children and adolescents with epilepsy are known to have high rates of behaviour problems and psychiatric co-morbidity. No studies on this topic have been conducted in developing countries, although 90% of such children live in the developing world. METHODS: The current study, set in Vellore in India, assessed the prevalence of psychopathology and its associations in children and adolescents with seizure disorder. One hundred and thirty two children were rated for psychopathology on the Child Behaviours Check List, and those who qualified as psychiatric cases were compared with those who did not. RESULTS: Seizure disorder was associated with significant psychopathology in 53.8% children. Belonging to a higher income group and living in an urban area (OR: 7.61, 95% CI: 2.78-20.8, p=0.0001), having longer than 3 years of illness (OR: 2.39, 95% CI: 2.18-5.67, p=0.03) and being treated by more than one anti-epileptic drug (OR: 3.08, 95% CI: 1.09-8.72, p=0.03) independently predicted psychopathology. CONCLUSIONS: Psychopathology reflected a complex interaction of seizures, socio-demographic factors and treatment related variables, in accord with studies in industrialised countries. Clinicians should be sensitive to identifying psychopathology since this may lead to effective interventions for this group of children.     

Space representation in children with dyslexia and children without dyslexia: Contribution of line bisection and circle centering tasks

Line bisection tasks (different space locations and different line lengths) and circle centering tasks (visuo-proprioceptive and proprioceptive explorations, with left or right starting positions) were used to investigate space representation in children with dyslexia and children without dyslexia. In line bisection, children with dyslexia showed a significant rightward bias for central and right-sided locations and a leftward bias for left-sided location. Furthermore, the spatial context processing was asymmetrically more efficient in the left space. In children without dyslexia, no significant bias was observed in central lines but the spatial context processing was symmetrical in both spaces. When the line length varied, no main effect was shown. These results strengthen the ‘inverse pseudoneglect’ hypothesis in dyslexia. In the lateral dimension of the circle centering tasks, children showed a response bias in the direction of the starting hand location for proprioceptive condition. For radial dimension, the children showed a forward bias in visuo-proprioceptive condition and more backward error in proprioceptive condition. Children with dyslexia showed a forward bias in clockwise exploration and more accurate performance in counterclockwise exploration for left starting position which may be in accordance with leftward asymmetrical spatial context processing in line bisection. These results underline the necessity to use the line bisection task with different locations as an appropriate experimental paradigm to study lateral representational bias in dyslexia. The contribution of the present results in the understanding of space representation in children with dyslexia and children without dyslexia is discussed in terms of attentional processes and neuroanatomical substrate.     

Impaired stress awareness in Spanish children with developmental dyslexia

The role of segmental phonology in developmental dyslexia (DD) is well established (e.g., deficit in phonological awareness), but the role of suprasegmental phonology (prosody) has been less widely investigated. Stress is one of the main prosodic features and refers to the relative prominence of syllables (strong/weak) within a word. The aim of the present study is to examine stress awareness in children with dyslexia and the possible mediation of phonemic awareness on suprasegmental phonological skills. Thirty-one Spanish children with DD and 31 chronological age-control children participated. Two stress awareness tasks were administrated, one with words and another with pseudowords. Results show that the children with dyslexia performed more poorly on both tasks than control children. The pattern of results in accuracy and reaction time suggest that, while children without difficulties use different strategies depending on the type of item, the children with dyslexia employ the same strategy to resolve the two tasks without any benefit of lexical knowledge about stress. Even so, this strategy did not work so efficiently as it did in the control group, which led the group with dyslexia to make a greater number of mistakes. It was also found that, when phonemic awareness was entered as a covariate, accuracy differences disappeared, but only in the word stress task. However, when lexical knowledge was not necessary (as in the pseudoword stress task) differences still remained statistically significant. Implications on the importance of suprasegmental processing in reading acquisition disabilities are discussed.     

Impaired implicit sequence learning in children with developmental dyslexia

It has been proposed that an impairment of procedural memory underlies a range of linguistic, cognitive and motor impairments observed in developmental dyslexia (DD). However, studies designed to test this hypothesis using the implicit sequence learning paradigm have yielded inconsistent results. A fundamental aspect of procedural learning is that it takes place over an extended time-period that may be divided into distinct stages based on both behavioural characteristics and neural correlates of performance. Yet, no study of implicit sequence learning in children with DD has included learning stages beyond a single practice session. The present study was designed to fill this important gap by extending the investigation to include the effects of overnight consolidation as well as those of further practice on a subsequent day. The results suggest that the most pronounced procedural learning impairment in DD may emerge only after extended practice, in learning stages beyond a single practice session.     

Mismatch negativity in children with dyslexia speaking Indian languages

Background  

Several studies in the past have found that phonological processing is abnormal in children with dyslexia. Phonological processing depends on the phonological rules of the language learnt. Western languages do not have a good phoneme to grapheme correspondence while many of the Indian languages do have it. Also phonological rules of western languages are different from that of Indian languages. Thus it would be erroneous to generalize the results of phonological processing obtained on children speaking western languages to those speaking Indian languages. Hence the present study was aimed to investigate the auditory processing in children with dyslexia who spoke and studied Indian languages.     

Executive functioning in adults and children with developmental dyslexia

The performance of developmentally dyslexic children and adults was studied upon a range of tasks that involved executive functioning. Both adult and child samples of dyslexics were found to under-perform on the group-embedded figures test. This test required the identification of constituent parts from within complex visual arrays, with good performance necessitating the inhibition of the processing of the surrounding context. A general deficit on visual-spatial tasks was eliminated as an explanation as dyslexics performed normally upon a range of other non-verbal assessments. The dyslexics consistently demonstrated a deficit in digit span tasks, a decrement that was increased with distractors, again suggesting difficulties in inhibiting the processing of the surrounding context. A deficit was also identified upon a verbal fluency task without a deficit in vocabulary level. Additionally, a specific deficit in the recollection of the temporal order of the presentation of items was in evidence, without a deficit in the recognition of the items themselves. The findings taken as a whole suggest that dyslexic individuals show deficiencies in executive functions relating to inhibition of distractors and to sequencing of events, a set of tasks associated with left prefrontal cortex functioning in the acquired neuropsychology literature.     

Brain connectivity in non-reading impaired children and children diagnosed with developmental dyslexia

Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) was used to investigate the relationship between white matter and reading abilities in reading impaired and non-reading impaired children. Seventeen children (7 non-reading impaired, 10 reading impaired) participated in this study. DTI was performed with 2 mm isotropic resolution to cover the entire brain along 30 noncollinear directions. Voxelwise analyses were conducted on data processed through Tract Based Spatial Statistics (TBSS). The data replicated previous results seen across multiple studies and extended findings to include measures of both real word and pseudoword decoding. Negative correlations were observed in the left posterior corpus callosum between fractional anisotropy (FA) values and both measures of decoding. Positive correlations between FA values and real word and pseudoword decoding were observed in the left superior corona radiata. This extension of findings regarding correlations between the corona radiata and reading skills suggests an important direction for future research into the neurological substrates of reading.     

Behaviour problems in adult women with Rett syndrome

Background Despite considerable interest in the genetic, physical and neurological aspects of Rett syndrome (RS), there have been few studies of associated behavioural and emotional features. Furthermore, few case studiesor surveys have included adult women with RS. The main aim of the present study was to compare behaviour problems in a sample of women with RS against data from normative samples. Methods The primary carers of 50 women with RS completed the community version of the Aberrant Behavior Checklist. Results Women with RS were rated as having lower levels of irritability, hyperactivity and inappropriate speech behaviours than normative samples of adults with intellectual disability. Conclusions A number of factors may affect the presentation of behaviour problems in women with RS (e.g. cognitive impairments or physical disabilities). Therefore, more research is needed in order to generate information about the behavioural phenotype of RS. The implications of the present data for future research are also discussed.     

Behaviour problems in Angelman syndrome

Angelman syndrome (AS) is a genetic disorder that is associated with a deletion on chromosome 15, and is characterized by abnormalities or impairments in neurological, motor and intellectual functioning. While behaviour problems have been reported iri clients with AS, relatively little is known about their developmental course and outcome. In this study, data on the nature and prevalence of behaviour problems among clients with AS were gathered from two sources: (i) a review of published case reports; and (2) parent responses to a survey of behaviour problems in a small (n= 11) sample of children with AS. Data from both sources showed that behaviour problems were present in males and females of all ages, and included language deficits, excessive laughter, hyperactivity, short attention span, problems with eating and sleeping, aggression, noncompliance, mouthing of objects, tantrums, and repetitive and stereotyped behaviour. Identification and treatment of severe behaviour problems in clients with AS may improve their adaptive functioning.     

Reading ability and phonological awareness in Japanese children with dyslexia

In alphabetic languages, the deficit of the phonological awareness is considered as the core deficit in developmental dyslexia. However, the role of phonological awareness in the acquisition of reading Japanese kana, the transparent, mora-based phonogram, has not been understood completely. We examine the abilities of Japanese dyslexic children on different types of Japanese phonological tasks, and discussed which tasks significantly account for each aspect of reading ability. METHODS: Fifteen dyslexic children (9.53+/-1.52 years old), and 15 children with normal reading ability (9.17+/-0.90 years old) participated in this study. They performed three types of phonological awareness tasks. The mora counting task and the mora reversal task of words require phonological awareness at the mora level. The letter rhyming task, which resembles the task in English language, requires phonological awareness at the phoneme level. We evaluated the reading ability by the reading speed, the reading errors, and the number of pauses while reading sentences aloud. RESULTS: The task performances of the dyslexic group on all three phonological awareness tasks were significantly lower than those of the control group. Stepwise multiple regression analysis revealed that the mora counting task and the rhyming letter task most significantly explained the reading speed and number of reading pauses. The mora reversal task of words, together with the antegraded digit span, significantly explained the reading errors. CONCLUSIONS: Japanese dyslexics showed deficits of phonological awareness both at the mora and the phoneme levels. Phonological awareness must be crucial for acquiring the ability of decoding phonograms, including Japanese kana.     

Mental rotation and motor performance in children with developmental dyslexia

We compared the performance of normal-reading (N = 14) and dyslexic children (N = 14) in a chronometric mental rotation task (cMRT) using letters, animals and pseudo-letters, which are objects that look like letters. In a typical chronometric mental rotation task two items are presented simultaneously on a screen whereby the right item is a rotated version of the left item and could be the same or a mirror version of the left item. The mental rotation paradigm is an appropriate method to test predictions of two different approaches trying to explain the problems for dyslexics when reading. According to the functional coordination deficit (FCD) model dyslexics show a failure in suppression of symmetry in the representation of graphemic material and therefore cannot decide whether the letter is normal or mirrored because of an ambiguous mapping between phoneme and grapheme representations. Therefore, the deficits of dyslexic children regarding mental rotation performance are restricted to the stimulus “letters”. According to findings that propose the involvement of the cerebellum in mental rotation tasks and a cerebellar deficit in dyslexia, an impaired mental rotation is expected affecting all types of stimuli. To investigate the involvement of the cerebellum, motor performance was additionally assessed because the cerebellum plays an important role in motor functions and motor imagery. For the cMRT we found that the dyslexic children show both slower reaction times regarding the stimulus “letters” and “pseudo-letters” and increased overall reaction times compared to non-dyslexic children. The mental rotation effect was more pronounced in dyslexic children than in normal readers. In contrast to previous approaches, the results of our study support the idea that poor results in mental rotation result from deficits in mental rotation itself rather than from a decision problem after mental rotation which supports the predictions of the cerebellar deficit hypothesis. However, since the impairment of dyslexics regarding mental rotation performance is letter-specific and motor results show no differences between dyslexic and non-dyslexic children, further approaches next to the cerebellar deficit hypothesis must be taken into account, especially in consideration of the fact that there are a number of causes for the failure in reading.     

The visual magnocellular pathway in Chinese-speaking children with developmental dyslexia

Previous research into the cognitive processes involved in reading Chinese and developmental dyslexia in Chinese, revealed that the single most important factor appears to be orthographic processing skills rather than phonological skills. Also some studies have indicated that even in alphabetic languages some dyslexic individuals reveal deficits in orthographic processing skills, which are linked to a deficit in the visual magnocellular pathway. The current study therefore employed a visual psychophysical experiment together with visual and auditory event-related potential (ERP) experiments eliciting mismatch negativity (MMN) to investigate the link between visual magnocellular functional abnormalities and developmental dyslexia in Chinese. The performance levels of Chinese children with developmental dyslexia (DD) from the behavioural and electrophysiological experiments were compared to those of the chronological age-matched (CA) children and those of the reading level matched (RL) younger children. Both the behavioural and electrophysiological results suggest that the orthographic processing skills were compromised in the Chinese developmental dyslexics, which in turn is linked to a deficit in the visual magnocellular system.     

Neural correlates of sequence learning in children with developmental dyslexia

Developmental Dyslexia (DD) is a condition in which reading accuracy and/or fluency falls substantially below what is expected based on the individuals age, general level of cognitive ability, and educational opportunities. The procedural circuit deficit hypothesis (PDH) proposes that DD may be largely explained in terms of alterations of the cortico‐basal ganglia procedural memory system (in particular of the striatum) whereas the (hippocampus‐dependent) declarative memory system is intact, and may serve a compensatory role in the condition. The present study was designed to test this hypothesis. Using Magnetic Resonance Imaging, we examined the functional and structural brain correlates of sequence‐specific procedural learning (SL) on the serial reaction time task, in 17 children with DD and 18 typically developing (TD) children. The study was performed over 2 days with a 24‐h interval between sessions. In line with the PDH, the DD group showed less activation of the striatum during the processing of sequential statistical regularities. These alterations predicted the amount of SL at day 2, which in turn explained variance in children''s reading fluency. Additionally, reduced hippocampal activation predicted larger SL gains between day 1 and day 2 in the TD group, but not in the DD group. At the structural level, caudate nucleus volume predicted the amount of acquired SL at day 2 in the TD group, but not in the DD group. The findings encourage further research into factors that promote learning in children with DD, including through compensatory mechanisms.