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Abstract: Current dimensional taxonomies of personality disorder (PD) establish that intense traits do not suffice to diagnose a disorder, and additional constructs reflecting dysfunction are required. However, traits appear able to predict maladaptation by themselves, which might avoid duplications and simplify diagnosis. On the other hand, if trait-based diagnoses are feasible, it is the whole personality profile that should be considered, rather than individual traits. This takes us into multidimensional spaces, which have their own particular – but poorly understood – logic. The present study examines how profile-level differences between normal and disordered subjects can be used for diagnosis. The Dimensional Assessment of Personality Pathology – Basic Questionnaire (DAPP-BQ) and the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5) were administered to a community and a clinical sample each (total n = 1,925 and 3,543 respectively). Intense traits proved to be common in the general population, so empirically-based thresholds are indispensable not to take as abnormal what is at most unideal. Profile-level parameters such as Euclidean and Mahalanobis distances outperformed individual traits in predicting mental problems and equaled the performance of published measures of dysfunction or severity. Personality profiles can play a more central role in identifying disorders than is currently acknowledged, provided that adequate metrics are used.

Although normal personality traits change gradually with age, personality disorders have been reported to remit rapidly and completely in little more than 10 years. Such a benign prognosis is surprising and may be due in part to the combined use of categorical diagnoses, seriously ill patients, and longitudinal designs in the existing literature. This study examines, for the first time, the development of personality pathology across a life span by means of dimensional models, represented by the Dimensional Assessment of Personality Pathology-Basic Questionnaire and the Personality Inventory for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition. We draw upon a cross-sectional design and four large clinical and community samples to avoid previous biases. We found that personality pathology declined by around 0.5 SD overall from age 20 to 60, though with noticeable differences between domains: Dissocial behavior and antagonism decreased by between two thirds and 1 SD; compulsivity increased at the same rate; disinhibition, negative affect, and psychoticism dropped by 0.5 SD; and detachment remained stable or rose slightly. In short, the changes in many clinically important traits are modest, occur at a slow pace, and roughly parallel the maturation effect found for normal personality traits. The resulting picture of personality disorder development is not as optimistic as previous studies would have us believe. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

This study investigated the effectiveness of Solve It! instruction on students’ knowledge of math problem-solving strategies. Solve It! is a cognitive strategy intervention designed to improve the math problem solving of middle school students with learning disabilities (LD). Participants included seventh- and eighth-grade students with LD ( n = 77) and average-achieving students ( n = 77). We examined treatment effects of the intervention, as well as differential effects of treatment across ability levels, on students’ knowledge of problem-solving strategies using the Math Problem-Solving Assessment. Results showed that students across ability levels who received Solve It! instruction reported using significantly more strategies than students in the comparison group. Implications for instruction are discussed as well as directions for future research.

A number of studies have shown that teachers are capable of recognising pupils with language difficulties if they have suitable guidelines or guidance.To determine the effectiveness of an observation-based protocol for pre-school education teachers in the detection of phonetic-phonological, semantic and morphosyntactic difficulties.The sample consisted of 175 children from public and state-subsidised schools in Valencia and its surrounding province, together with their teachers. The children were aged between 3 years and 6 months and 5 years and 11 months. The protocol that was used asks for information about pronunciation skills (intelligibility, articulation), conversational skills (with adults, with peers), literal understanding of sentences, grammatical precision, expression through discourse, lexical knowledge and semantics.There was a significant correlation between the teachers' observations and the criterion scores on intelligibility, literal understanding of sentences, grammatical expression and lexical richness, but not in the observations concerning articulation and verbal reasoning, which were more difficult for the teachers to judge. In general, the observation protocol proved to be effective, it guided the teachers in their observations and it asked them suitable questions about linguistic data that were relevant to the determination of difficulties in language development. The use of this protocol can be an effective strategy for collecting information for use by speech therapists and school psychologists in the early detection of children with language development problems.

Mathematical abilities and executive function in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and learning disabilities in mathematics. Even though 26% of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) show a specific mathematic learning difficulty (MLD), the studies have been scarce. The present study had the following goals: 1) to study the profile related to cognitive and metacognitive skills implied in calculation and problem-solving in children with ADHD+MLD, and to compare them in children with ADHD, children with MLD, and children without problems; 2) to study the severity of the deficit in executive function (EF) in children with ADHD+MLD. Comparing the groups MLD, ADHD, ADHD+MLD, and children without problems, the results highlighted that children with ADHD+MLD showed a cognitive and metacognitive deficit in mathematic achievement. Furthermore, results showed a more severe deficit in the EF in children with ADHD+MLD.

Introduccion. Diversos estudios demuestran que los profesores pueden reconocer con suficiente sensibilidad a los alumnos con dificultades del lenguaje si disponen de una guia u orientacion adecuada. Objetivo. Comprobar la eficacia en la deteccion de dificultades fonetico-fonologicas, semanticas y morfosintacticas de un protocolo de observacion del lenguaje para maestros de educacion infantil. Sujetos y metodos. Han participado 175 ninos de colegios publicos y concertados de Valencia y su provincia con sus correspondientes maestros. Los ninos tenian edades que iban desde los 3 anos y 6 meses hasta los 5 anos y 11 meses. El protocolo utilizado solicita informacion sobre habilidades de pronunciacion (inteligibilidad, articulacion), habilidades de conversacion (con los adultos, con sus iguales), comprension literal de oraciones, precision gramatical, expresion mediante el discurso, conocimiento lexico y semantica. Resultados y conclusiones. Hubo correlacion significativa entre las observaciones de los maestros y las puntuaciones de criterio de inteligibilidad, de comprension literal de oraciones, de expresion gramatical y de riqueza lexica, pero no en las observaciones sobre articulacion y razonamiento verbal, que fueron mas dificiles de juzgar por los maestros. En general, el protocolo de observacion se mostro eficaz, guio a los maestros en sus observaciones y les pregunto convenientemente sobre datos linguisticos relevantes en la determinacion de dificultades en el desarrollo del lenguaje. El empleo de este protocolo puede ser una estrategia eficaz de recogida de informacion al servicio de los logopedas y psicologos escolares para la deteccion rapida de ninos con dificultades en el desarrollo del lenguaje.

Introduccion. Diferentes procedimientos basados en desarrollos informaticos han demostrado ser eficaces para ensenar estrategias cognitivas y metacognitivas para la resolucion de problemas en matematicas. Objetivo. Analizar en estudiantes con dificultades de aprendizaje la eficacia del entrenamiento en estrategias cognitivas, con tres formatos instruccionales: programa de instruccion directa del profesor (T-D), instruccion basada en un programa informatico (CAI) y programa combinado (T-D + CAI). Sujetos y metodos. 44 ninos con dificultades de aprendizaje en las matematicas, entre 8 y 10 anos de edad, fueron asignados al azar a cada uno de los tres formatos de instruccion, asi como a un grupo control sin entrenamiento en estrategias cognitivas. En las tres condiciones que se compararon, los estudiantes aprendieron estrategias linguisticas y visuales para la solucion de problemas con autoinstrucciones. Se utilizaron diferentes tipos de medidas para analizar la posible eficacia diferencial de los tres metodos de instruccion implementados: test de solucion de problemas, calificaciones en matematicas, escala de responsabilidad interna del rendimiento y valoracion del profesor de las conductas en la escuela. Resultados y conclusiones. El grupo con entrenamiento T-D y el grupo con T-D + CAI mejoraron significativamente en solucion de problemas de texto y en sus calificaciones matematicas de la pre a la postevaluacion. Ademas, los estudiantes del grupo T-D + CAI resolvieron mas problemas de la vida diaria y desarrollaron mas atribuciones internas en comparacion con el grupo control y el grupo CAI. Finalmente, en relacion con las conductas en la escuela, se observaron mejoras en el ajuste escolar y en problemas de aprendizaje en los estudiantes del grupo con instruccion combinada (T-D + CAI).

Introduccion. El trastorno por deficit de atencion e hiperactividad (TDAH) y las dificultades del aprendizaje son dos categorias diagnosticas de gran relevancia e impacto social, que se encuentran asociadas en torno al 25-35%. Una explicacion que ofrece la investigacion sobre este solapamiento es el deficit en el funcionamiento ejecutivo (FE). Objetivos. 1) Comparar el FE y el conocimiento matematico aplicado en ninos con TDAH, dificultades del aprendizaje de las matematicas (DAM) o TDAH + DAM e identificar los deficit que experimentan; 2) Comprobar si se cumple la hipotesis de la fenocopia en el caso de la condicion TDAH + DAM. Sujetos y metodos. Se planteo un diseno casi experimental 2 × 2, cuya muestra estaba formada por 78 participantes (6-13 anos) repartidos en cuatro grupos: TDAH (n = 33), DAM (n = 15), TDAH + DAM (n = 15) y control (n = 15). Se administraron tests dirigidos a evaluar diferentes procesos cognitivos ademas del conocimiento matematico aplicado: control inhibitorio (go/no go); memoria de trabajo verbal (digitos-recuerdo inverso y tarea de memoria de conteo) y temporovisuoespacial (MTVE); memoria a corto plazo (digitos-recuerdo directo), atencion (TEC); velocidad en calculo (Canals) y problemas de la vida real. Resultados y conclusiones. Considerando las variables edad, genero y cociente intelectual como covariables, los resultados indicaron que los tres grupos con problemas mostraron deficit de atencion y en la memoria de trabajo, y destacaba el grupo con DAM al presentar un deficit especifico en el recuerdo de informacion temporovisuoespacial. En cambio, el deficit en el control inhibitorio se mostro especifico del TDAH. Finalmente, los resultados no apoyaron la hipotesis de la fenocopia, por lo que se trataba de un perfil acumulativo.

Introduccion y desarrollo. El presente trabajo es un compendio de las investigaciones llevadas a cabo en los ultimos anos por equipo de investigacion de la Universidad de Valencia sobre el trastorno por deficit de atencion con hiperactividad (TDAH). En el se describen tres grandes bloques de estudio: avances sobre la caracterizacion diferencial de los subtipos del TDAH, asi como sus perfiles de comorbilidad, capacidad discriminativa de tareas neuropsicologicas en la evaluacion de los ninos con TDAH y analisis de la efectividad de las intervenciones multicomponentes y multicontextualizadas en los ninos con TDAH. Conclusion. El analisis conjunto de los resultados de estos trabajos plantea reflexiones y directrices que aportan, sin duda, beneficios tanto en la delimitacion de los distintos subtipos del TDAH como en la mejora de los procedimientos de intervencion..