This study evaluates the psychometric properties of a verbal fluency task for potential use as an outcome measure in future clinical trials involving children with Down syndrome. Eighty-five participants attempted a modified version of the Neuropsychological Assessment of Children, Second Edition Word Generation Task at two time points. In the…

Autism is a lifelong condition characterized by repetitive and restrictive behaviors and differences in social communication. The reported prevalence of autism has risen exponentially in the past years. Early identification and subsequent early intervention are key to promoting better outcomes for autistic individuals. However, there is a dearth…

Background: Developmental research provides considerable evidence of a strong relationship between verbal and visuospatial working memory (WM) and mathematics ability across age groups. However, little is known about how components of WM (i.e., short-term storage, processing speed, the central executive) might relate to mathematics sub-categories…

This study compares the achievement of two cohorts of immigrants with ages between 7 and 30 years old. Two sets of participants were assessed in two points in time and in different regions of Portugal. 169 students with similar immigration conditions for this analysis (nationality, length of residence, previous education in the country of origin)…

Participants ranging in age from 3 to 98 years (N = 708; approximately 60% female; 49% Caucasian, 38% Asian; 12% Other ethnicities, 1% Indigenous; modal household income > $80,000) completed a battery of tasks involving verbal ability, executive function, and perspective-taking. Wherever possible, all participants completed the same version of…

As an information-bearing auditory attribute of sound, pitch plays a crucial role in the perception of speech and music. Studies examining pitch processing in autism spectrum disorder have produced equivocal results. To understand this discrepancy from a mechanistic perspective, we used a novel data-driven method, the reverse-correlation paradigm,…

Despite the lasting interest towards the relationship between intelligence and creativity, comparably less attention is paid to its age-related changes. Our paper considers the organization of fluid intelligence and psychometric indicators of creativity and is based on the experimental data obtained for children aged 11 (n = 99) and for young…

The current study aimed to investigate whether age, gender, and testing environment may have an effect on children's creativity in a real-life setting. Participants included 111 children aged from seven to eleven years. They were given one verbal (Guilford's Alternative Uses Task) and one figural (Test for Creative Thinking-Drawing Production)…

When and how do children develop an understanding of the subjectivity of intentions? Intentions are subjective mental states in many ways. One way concerns their aspectuality: Whether or not a given behavior constitutes an intentional action depends on how, under which aspect, the agent represents it. Oedipus, for example, intended to marry…

Early diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in children enables earlier access to services and better ability to predict subsequent development. A vast body of literature consistently shows discrepancies in the age of diagnosis between children from varying socio-economic levels, cultural and ethnic backgrounds. The present study examines…

As a spoken word unfolds over time, similar sounding words ("cap" and "cat") compete until one word "wins". Lexical competition becomes more efficient from infancy through adolescence. We examined one potential mechanism underlying this development: lexical inhibition, by which activated candidates suppress…

Purpose: The aim of this study was to explore when and how Mandarin-speaking children use contextual cues to normalize speech variability in perceiving lexical tones. Two different cognitive mechanisms underlying speech normalization (lower level acoustic normalization and higher level acoustic-phonemic normalization) were investigated through the…

Working memory (WM) measures are routinely integrated into comprehensive diagnostic evaluations. However, there is little research regarding the underlying components of WM and their developmental trajectories. The current study examined the developmental trajectories of distinct WM components in a sample of 303 individuals ages 6 through…

Children with autism often display discrepancies in their intellectual functioning, with nonverbal skills frequently being more developed than verbal. Compared to monolingual autistic children, however, much less is known about how bilingualism affects intelligence in autism. The current study examined the intelligence profiles of 146 bilingual…

We examined the concurrent relationship between narrative skills (the Renfrew Bus Story Test) and core language measures (vocabulary, grammar and verbal memory) at age 4 and the longitudinal relationship between core language and listening comprehension skills at age 7 in a sample of 215 children using latent variables and structural equation…