Background: The relationship between inadequate sleep and mood has been well-established in adults and is supported primarily by correlational data in younger populations. Given that adolescents often experience shortened sleep on school nights, we sought to better understand the effect of experimentally induced chronic sleep restriction on…

During the last two decades of the twentieth century, some researchers and practitioners in gifted education adopted the belief that overexcitabilities (OEs), from Dabrowski's Theory of Positive Disintegration, are more prevalent in gifted adolescents that in other adolescents. This belief led to recommendations for gifted education, including the…

Background: Self-injurious and aggressive behaviours are reported as components of some behavioural phenotypes but there are few studies comparing across syndrome groups. In this study we examined the prevalence of these behaviours and the associated person characteristics in seven genetic syndromes. Methods: Questionnaire data on self-injury and…

Pathological laughing and crying is a disorder of emotional expression seen in a number of neurological diseases. The aetiology is poorly understood, but clinical descriptions suggest a disorder of emotion regulation. The goals of this study were: (i) to characterize the subjective, behavioural and physiological emotional reactions that occur…

To develop prevention activities, an analysis is conducted of child and parent characteristics that occur significantly more often among children with a mild intellectual disability and behavior problems than among children with a mild intellectual disability and no behavior problems and their families. The sample consisted of 45 children…

Background: Boys with early onset of conduct disorder (CD), most of whom also meet diagnostic criteria of a comorbid attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), tend to exhibit high levels of aggression throughout development. While a number of functional neuroimaging studies on emotional processing have been performed in antisocial adults,…

The present study examined performance on an arithmetic task of increasing difficulty and a frustrating puzzle task for children with ADHD and comparison children. Emotional competence also was investigated in the two groups. Sixty-four children, 21 previously diagnosed with ADHD, participated. Performance on the arithmetic task was measured in…

This study examined the relationship between maternal expressed emotion (EE) and children's perceived self-competence, behavior and intelligence in a community sample of 190 urban, African American children ages 6-7. Maternal EE was measured by the Five Minute Speech Sample. Self reports and standardized measures were used to examine other mother…

Poor social skills and behavioral problems are a major component of ADHD. The different explanations offered so far, such as cognitive deficits and deficient self regulation, have not been able fully to account for the various aspects of the social dysfunction, suggesting that other mechanisms might underlay this impairment. Our study sought to…

In contrast to typically developing children, children with autism rarely exhibit cooperative social behavior. To examine whether this problem reflects global developmental delays or autism-specific deficits, the present study compared cooperation, emotional understanding, personality characteristics, and social behavior of 10 children with autism…

Objective: This study examined Barkley's (1997b) theory regarding the emotional regulation of children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Method: Mothers of children with and without ADHD between the ages of 6 and 15 were asked to rate their child's emotional response on each of three measures. Results: Children with ADHD were…

Objective: This study was designed to examine context effects or provocation ecologies in the daily lives of children with ADHD. Method: Across 7 days, mothers and children (27 children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder [ADHD] taking stimulant medication; 25 children without ADHD; ages 7-12 years) provided electronic diary reports…