Differences in joint attention are prominent for some children with autism and are often used as an indicator of the disorder. This study examined the joint attention competencies of young children with autism who demonstrated joint attention ability and compared them to children with developmental delays. A total of 40 children with autism and…

This study investigated the development of novel metaphor and metonymy comprehension in both typically developing (TD) children and individuals with Williams syndrome (WS). Thirty-one TD children between the ages of 3;09 and 17;01 and thirty-four individuals with WS between the ages of 7;01 and 44 years old were administered a newly developed task…

Mathematics is an important aspect of daily life. Basic numeracy skills are needed to accomplish everyday tasks. However, research regarding the relationship between cognitive ability, mental age, and basic numeracy skills for children with intellectual disability (ID) is scarce. This research study investigated the correlation between…

Background: Although many children with Down syndrome experience hearing loss, there has been little research to investigate its impact on speech and language development. Studies that have investigated the association give inconsistent results. These have often been based on samples where children with the most severe hearing impairments have…

Background: Although children with intellectual disabilities (ID) often provide accurate witness testimony, jurors tend to perceive their witness statements to be inherently unreliable. Method: The current study explored the free recall transcripts of child witnesses with ID who had watched a video clip, relative to those of typically developing…

The present study explored the relations among lie-telling ability, false belief understanding, and verbal mental age. We found that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), like typically developing children, can and do tell antisocial lies (to conceal a transgression) and white lies (in politeness settings). However, children with ASD were…

Previous research into face processing in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has revealed atypical biases toward particular facial information during identity recognition. Specifically, a focus on features (or high spatial frequencies [HSFs]) has been reported for both face and nonface processing in ASD. The current study investigated the development…

This study investigates whether distinct neurodevelopmental disorders show distinct patterns of impairments in particular grammatical abilities and the relation of those grammatical patterns to general language delays and intellectual disabilities. We studied two disorders (autism and Williams syndrome [WS]) and two distinct properties (Principle…

The "over-age, under-credited" (OA/UC) student population is defined as high school students who are at least two years behind their peers in terms of age and credits earned toward a high school diploma. To date, few studies have examined the schooling of OA/UC students. The purpose of this study is to use the insights of six African…

Background: Fragile X syndrome (FXS) and Down syndrome (DS) are the two leading genetic causes of intellectual disability, and FXS is the most common known genetic condition associated with autism. Both FXS and DS are associated with significant language impairment, but little is known about expressive language across domains over time or the role…

The autistic impairments in emotional and social competence, imagination and generating ideas predict qualitative differences in expressive drawings by children with autism beyond that accounted by any general learning difficulties. In a sample of 60 5-19-year-olds, happy and sad drawings were requested from 15 participants with non-savant autism…

The role of executive function, specifically inhibitory control and generativity, in symbolic play was investigated in 20 children aged 48-89 months. Assessment of inhibitory control was via the Sun-Moon Stroop task, and generativity was assessed with the Semantic Fluency task, as well as a new object substitution task which required children to…

Individuals with Down syndrome (DS) tend to have impaired verbal short-term memory (STM), which persists even when visual support is provided for carrying out verbal tasks. Objective: The current study aims to investigate whether visuospatial support, rather than just visual, can compensate for verbal STM deficits in these individuals. The…

Adults with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have shown deficits in switching between rules governing their behaviour, as have high-functioning children with ASD. However, there are few studies of flexibility in lower-functioning children with ASD. The current study investigated this phenomenon with a group of low-functioning children with ASD…

The ability to flexibly adapt to the changing demands of the environment is often reported as a core deficit in fragile X syndrome (FXS). However, the cognitive processes that determine this attentional set-shifting deficit remain elusive. The present study investigated attentional set-shifting ability in fragile X syndrome males with the…