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The developing brain is remarkably plastic, as evidenced by language studies of children with perinatal stroke (PS). Despite initial delays and in contrast to adults with comparable lesions, children with PS perform comparably to their age-matched peers in free conversation by school age. Recent studies of spoken language in older children with PS have indicated limits to neural plasticity. Writing, a cognitively demanding and language dependent domain, is understudied in children with PS. Investigating writing development will provide another perspective on the continuing linguistic development in this population. Written language performance in 43 children with PS and 60 of their typically-developing (TD) peers was evaluated to further investigate the breadth and limits to neural plasticity. Two tasks of varying difficulty were administered: a picture description, which provided a referent to facilitate writing for the children, and a more challenging autobiographical narrative. Texts were analyzed across three broad writing dimensions – productivity, complexity, and linguistic accuracy. Group differences were primarily found on accuracy indices. Morphological accuracy was most impacted by early brain injury and older children with PS did not have higher morphological accuracy than their younger counterparts, suggesting limited development with age. There were no differences in performance based on hemisphere of lesion. In addition to enhancing our understanding of long-term language outcomes in children with PS, the results further illuminate the extent and limitations of early neural plasticity for language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The investigation of emotion recognition in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has both theoretical and practical implications. However, although many studies have examined facial emotion recognition in ASD, some points remain unclear. We therefore studied facial emotion recognition in young children with ASD across a small age range, in order to determine (1) their ability to recognize emotion and (2) the developmental trajectory of this ability. Twenty-two children with ASD aged 4-8 years were compared with typically developing children matched on either chronological age or verbal mental age. We administered three facial emotion tasks: matching, identification, and labeling. Results showed that children with ASD and typically developing children had difficulty with labeling emotions, but not with matching or identifying them. Happiness was the easiest to recognize, and surprise the hardest. The children with ASD did not exhibit delayed onset in the development of facial emotion recognition. To conclude, emotion recognition difficulties in children with ASD primarily concern the recognition of negative emotions and the identification of surprise, as they do in TD groups. This should be taken into account in future research, as well as in the design of future intervention programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past few decades a large body of work from developmental neurobiology has shown that mammalian brain development is the product of dynamic and adaptive processes operating within highly constrained, but continually changing, biological and environmental contexts. The recent study of children with prenatal focal brain injury supports this dynamic view of development for humans. Children''s injuries often affect substantial portions of one cerebral hemisphere, resulting in damage that would compromise cognitive ability in adults. However, longitudinal behavioral studies of this population have revealed only mild deficits. It is suggested here that children''s capacity for adaptation reflects normal developmental processes operating against a backdrop of serious neural perturbation. Data from three behavioral domains – linguistics, spatial cognition and affective development – illustrate this complex profile of change. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Williams syndrome (WS) is a rare genetic disease with a specific neuropsychological profile. WS people are generally described as being “hypersociable” and as having relatively well-preserved language abilities despite cognitive retardation. Recent research into the structural aspects of their language and their sociability has found nonhomogeneous profiles (with strong and weak points) in these two areas. The goal of this study was to show that the findings are analogous for the pragmatic facet of WS language. We also looked into the source of this heterogeneity by comparing performance on two contrasted tasks: narration and collaborative conversation. Twelve native French-speaking WS children and adolescents ages 6 years 6 months to 18 years 11 months participated in the study. They were compared to children with Down''s syndrome, and to typical children of the same chronological age or the same mental age. The results showed that the pragmatic abilities of the WS children and adolescents defined a unique profile: they were proficient in some areas (narration), deficient in others (collaborative conversation), and atypical in still others (expression of subjective views or feelings). [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Highlights: [•] We compare the lexical spelling performance in dictation and communicative narration. [•] Two groups: specific language impairment (SLI)/typically developing (TD). [•] Superiority of TD group: less important in the narratives than in the dictations. [•] Adolescents: in the narratives, the SLI group was not different from the TD group. [•] SLI group, in the narratives (unlike dictation): no specific spelling errors. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This study investigated the relationship between white matter microstructure and the development of morphosyntax in a spoken narrative in typically developing children (TD) and in children with high functioning autism (HFA). Autism is characterized by language and communication impairments, yet the relationship between morphosyntactic development in spontaneous discourse contexts and neural development is not well understood in either this population or typical development. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) was used to assess multiple parameters of diffusivity as indicators of white matter tract integrity in language-related tracts in children between 6 and 13 years of age. Children were asked to spontaneously tell a story about at time when someone made them sad, mad, or angry. The story was evaluated for morphological accuracy and syntactic complexity. Analysis of the relationship between white matter microstructure and language performance in TD children showed that diffusivity correlated with morphosyntax production in the superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF), a fiber tract traditionally associated with language. At the anatomical level, the HFA group showed abnormal diffusivity in the right inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF) relative to the TD group. Within the HFA group, children with greater white matter integrity in the right ILF displayed greater morphological accuracy during their spoken narrative. Overall, the current study shows an association between white matter structure in a traditional language pathway and narrative performance in TD children. In the autism group, associations were only found in the ILF, suggesting that during real world language use, children with HFA rely less on typical pathways and more on alternative ventral pathways that possibly mediate visual elements of language. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: A frequently noted but largely anecdotal behavioral observation in Williams syndrome (WS) is an increased tendency to approach strangers, yet the basis for this behavior remains unknown. We examined the relationship between affect identification ability and affiliative behavior in participants with WS relative to a neurotypical comparison group. We quantified social behavior from self-judgments of approachability for faces, and from parent/other evaluations of real life. Relative to typical individuals, participants with WS were perceived as more sociable by others, exhibited perceptual deficits in affect identification, and judged faces of strangers as more approachable. In WS, high self-rated willingness to approach strangers was correlated with poor affect identification ability, suggesting that these two findings may be causally related. We suggest that the real-life hypersociability in WS may arise at least in part from abnormal perceptual processing of other people''s faces, rather than from an overall bias at the level of behavior. While this did not achieve statistical significance, it provides preliminary evidence to suggest that impaired social-perceptual ability may play a role in increased approachability in WS. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The aim of our study was to compare two neurodevelopmental disorders (Williams syndrome and autism) in terms of the ability to recognize emotional and nonemotional facial expressions. The comparison of these two disorders is particularly relevant to the investigation of face processing and should contribute to a better understanding of social behaviour and social cognition. Twelve participants with WS (from 6;1 to 15 years) and twelve participants with autism (from 4;9 to 8 years) were matched on verbal mental age. Their performances were compared with those of twelve typically developing controls matched on verbal mental age (from 3;1 to 9;2). A set of five tasks assessing different dimensions of emotional and nonemotional facial recognition were administered. Results indicated that recognition of emotional facial expressions is more impaired in Williams syndrome than in autism. Our study comparing Williams syndrome and autism over a small age range highlighted two distinct profiles which call into question the relationships between social behaviour/cognition and emotion perception. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]