The relationship between preschool children's level of gender understanding and their ability to identify gender-linked attributes was examined. Participants were 26 3-year-old and 30 4-year-old children who were administered a single-cue gender labelling task, Slaby and Frey's (1975) gender constancy test, and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test.…

Retarded and borderline intelligence adolescents (MA 8-12 years) and nonretarded children (MA 6-12 years) were given logical problem solving tasks. Results showed a profound deficiency in low IQ individuals on certain tasks requiring foresight and logic; MA markedly overestimates the performance of these individuals relative to the performance of…

Interpersonal problem-solving skills of 17 mildly retarded students and two groups of nonretarded subjects (Ns=30) matched on mental age (MA) and chronological age were assessed using hypothetical problem solving situations. Results indicated similarities between mentally retarded subjects and MA matched controls in types and number of strategies…

Examines differences in habituation in a visual attention task as a function of chronological age, mental age, and handicapping condition. Subjects were 102 children who ranged in age from 3 to 36 months and who were classified as Down Syndrome, cerebral palsied, developmentally delayed, or multiply handicapped. (Author/RH)

Do stage-related patterns of early cognitive development reported for normally developing children also characterize at-risk and handicapped children when mental age organization of data is used? Mental age predicted Piagetian-based cognitive levels one to three but did not predict highest-level symbolic functioning in 95 handicapped children.…

A lock box for investigating preschool children's problem-solving behavior was used with 17 Down syndrome children and 17 normal children, all of whom had a mean age of 37.4 months. Small children showed greater competence, more organization, and less perseverance than those with Down syndrome. (RH)

Research supported by NICDH research grant HD-MH-03008.

This study compared 36 learning disabled school-grade children with 17 controls matched for mental age on the ability to inhibit hand movement. Using a "Move A Ball Slowly" game-like apparatus, responses suggested older rather than younger disabled children had more difficulty. (Author)

Among a cross-sectional sample of pupils of both sexes in Britain evidence showed accelerations in intellectual development at 7 and 16 years of age. Acceleration at the younger age is a new finding. Age, verbal IQ, teacher's estimate, and social class were all significant predictors of intellectual development. (Author/IS)

Understanding of the cardinality principle in children with Williams Syndrome (WS) was compared to that of typically developing children. Findings indicated that such understanding was extremely delayed in WS children and only at the level predicted by their visuo-spatial mental age. Findings suggested that visuo-spatial ability played a greater…

The study of affect comprehension in 15 children with pervasive developmental disorders (ages 7-10) and normal children matched for mental age found that the disabled children were impaired on affect matching compared to the controls and were impaired on face and affect matching relative to their own performance on object matching. (Author/DB)

Examined empathy and conservation abilities of nonretarded children with autism and compared their performance to that of normally developing children. Autistic children performed surprising well, but not as well as normal children. There was a closer association between cognitive abilities and affective understanding among the autistic children…

Examined the nature of repetitive, ritualistic, and compulsive-like behaviors in typically developing and children and individuals with Down Syndrome (DS), matched on mental age (MA). Found that that both groups showed similar MA-related changes in compulsive-like behaviors. Younger children showed more compulsive-like behaviors than older.…

The aim was to explore the comorbidity between Angelman syndrome and autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). Identification of autism in children with Angelman syndrome presents a diagnostic challenge. In the present study, 16 children with Angelman syndrome, all with a 15q11-13 deletion, were examined for ASDs. Thirteen children with Angelman syndrome…