Search

Background: Life expectancy is on rise and the intriguing question is: When does cognitive decline occur among adults with intellectual disability, compared to adults with typical development? This cross-sectional study examined cognitive performance of crystallised/fluid intelligence, working and long-term memory of adults with intellectual disability of etiologies other than Down syndrome (IQ 50-68) and adults with typical development (IQ 85-114) in four age cohorts (30-39; 40-49; 50-59; 60-69). Method: The WAIS III[superscript HEB] and the Rey-AVLT were administered to both groups. Results: Four patterns of cognitive performance were found: (a) Vocabulary (crystallised intelligence), Spatial Span Forward and Retention yielded similar scores across all four age cohorts in participants with typical development and with intellectual disability. (b) Similarities, Raven and Digit Span Backward exhibit lower scores only in 50-59 or 60-69 compared to the 30-39 age cohort in both groups, (c) Digit Span Forward, Spatial Span Backward and Total Leaning (LTM) yielded lower scores in the 50-59 or 60-69 age cohorts in the typical group, but similar scores in participants with intellectual disability along the age cohorts, (d) Block Design (fluid intelligence) yielded a lower score in the 50-59 cohort versus lower scores only at ages 60-69 in participants with typical development. Conclusions: Our findings suggest a possible parallel trajectory in age-related cognitive performance for individuals with and without intellectual disability in six measures, and a possible more preserved trajectory in fluid intelligence and some memory measures in adults with intellectual disability compared to their peers. Caution should be exercised regarding Digit and Spatial Span Backwards, which yielded a floor effect in participants with intellectual disability. The Cognitive Reserve Theory, the Safeguard Hypothesis and late maturation might serve as explanations for these findings.

This follow-up study aimed to examine (a) the impact of 4.5 years participation in postsecondary education (PSE) on students with intellectual disability (ID) compared to adults with ID who did not participate in PSE, (b) whether a different impact on crystallized and fluid intelligence after 4.5 years would be found among PSE students with higher and lower initial IQ, (c) micro-level individual differences in each PSE group. The WAIS-III was administered at Time 1 and after 4.5 years to PSE students in an inclusive full requirements model (n = 6; IQ = 66-72) and to the PSE students in the inclusive adapted requirements model (n = 6; IQ = 54 -61) and adults with ID who did not participate in the PSE (n = 12). Only PSE students showed improvement in FSIQ, verbal and performance IQ in this Time 2 evaluation, with individual differences between the students. FSIQ and verbal IQ of students with a higher IQ exceeded the diagnostic cutoff of ID (IQ < 70-75). Despite the small sample size, the findings indicate that time extension and mediation strategies enable adults with mild ID to achieve academic goals, thus, supporting the Compensation Age and the Mastery Learning theories.

The ability to chain together sequences of information andaction is pivotal to everyday acquisition of skills. Despiteextensive research of sequence learning, little focus has beengiven to individual performance in standard tasks measuringthis capability. As a result, little is known regarding whatknowledge participants gain during such tasks. In the currentwork, an individual- and item-based analysis is performed ofeye movements that occur during a spatial sequence learningtask and reflect anticipation of upcoming target locations. Weshow that the knowledge participants acquire during the taskis tightly linked to a-priori response biases they bring into theexperiment. Results suggest that a-priori biases may be asizeable influence on performance in learning experiments,that tends to be overlooked. Implications for designing andreading studies of sequence learning are discussed.

The inclusion of technology in schools, coupled with the importance of promoting reading for students with difficulties in particular, has increased the need for investigating processes that support reading and reading comprehension. The present study therefore focuses on the characteristics of reading from an educational digital book containing an expository text and illustrations, conducted by means of an eye tracking methodology enabling online reflection of the reading process. The effect on reading a highlighted text with illustrations was compared to that of reading a static text with illustrations. Participants included 30 poor readers and 31 typical readers aged 8-10.9, randomly assigned to two groups according to reading mode: An experimental group that read a highlighted text with an illustration and a control group that read a static text with an illustration. The findings indicate that among poor readers, the highlighted text in the digital book evoked greater visual focusing on the text and more transitions between the text and the illustration. The findings of the study contribute to our knowledge on multimedia learning and the process of reading among poor and typical readers while reading highlighted text with illustrations.

Facilitation of memory for target stimuli due to similar context in the learning and testing phases is known as "context effect" (CE). The present study aimed to investigate the interaction between CE as elicited by the consistency of the language of presentation (Hebrew vs. English) with the native language (Hebrew vs. English) in both auditory and visual modalities. Overall, 120 individuals participated in the experiment. As predicted, CE was evident when the language of presentation remained consistent between study and test. Contrary to our prediction, Hebrew speakers remembered more English words, and vice versa. A possible explanation is that this difference is due to the cognitive effort invested when processing a less dominant language, thus resulting in better recognition. This study has several practical implications, including a recommendation that academic institutions test students in the language in which the material was presented in order to measure the students' knowledge more accurately.

Objective: The present study examined the cognitive reserve (CR) theory at late stages of Alzheimer's disease (AD). The objective is to replicate previous studies and examine the complex role of education and family size as indicators of CR. Participants and methods: This is a retrospective study included 642 patients diagnosed with AD after age 65, categorized into low education (LE, ≤ 8 years, n = 141) and medium-high education (MHE, ≥ 9 years, n = 442) groups. Participants were followed up longitudinally using the Mini Mental State Examination. Results: Higher education in the MHE group, but not in the LE group, correlated with delayed diagnosis. In both groups, higher education correlated with accelerated cognitive decline. In the MHE group, country of origin was associated with cognitive decline, while in the LE group, it was linked to family size. Conclusions: This study shows that in patients with MHE but not in LE, higher education resulted in delayed diagnosis. Conversely, in cases of LE, this measure may not fully reflect CR and abilities. Additionally, higher education was associated with faster deterioration, a finding that has not been replicated often in the literature. The study illustrates the complex impact of CR proxies on age of diagnosis and cognitive decline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the various theories proposed to explain developmental dyslexia (DD), the theory of specific procedural learning difficulties has gained certain support and is the framework for the current research. This theory claims that an inability to achieve skill automaticity explains the difficulties experienced by individuals with DD. Previous research on automaticity and DD has exhibited methodological issues such as a failure to test a range of skills. The current study broadens previous findings by delineating various reading skills correlated with several aspects of skill acquisition. Furthermore, the study utilizes two nonverbal tasks that reflect distinct types of skills: Serial Reaction Time (SRT) and the Tower of Hanoi Puzzle (TOHP). A total of 53 children aged 11 to 13 participated in the study, of whom 23 were children with DD and 30 were controls. Participants completed a test battery that consisted of reading tests, the SRT, and the TOHP. Results show no differences in learning rate between individuals with or without DD, although individuals with DD performed both tasks at a slower rate. Correlations were identified between a number of reading measures and measures of skill acquisition, expressed primarily in individuals with DD. Implications are examined in the discussion.

Motor sequence learning has been studied extensively in Developmental dyslexia (DD). The purpose of the present research was to examine procedural learning of letter names and motor sequences in individuals with DD and control groups. Both groups completed the Serial Search Task which enabled the assessment of learning of letter names and motor sequences independently of each other. Control participants learned both the letter names as well as the motor sequence. In contrast, individuals with DD were impaired in learning of the letter names sequence and showed a reliable transfer of the motor sequence. Previous studies proved that motor sequence learning is impaired in DD. The present study demonstrated that this deficit is more pronounced when the task to be learned involves linguistic units. This resiult implies that the procedural learning system of language is more deficient than the motor procedural learning system in individuals with DD. The dissociation between motor and letter names sequence learning in those with DD also implies that the systems underlying these two tasks are separable. (Contains 1 table and 1 figure.)

It has been proposed that the formation of episodic associations between stimuli may involve different processes when memoranda are from the same or different perceptual domains, and when stimuli are experienced concurrently or sequentially. Such differences are postulated to determine the degree of unitization of memoranda, and are asserted to influence whether such associations are later retrieved via familiarity or recollection. In two experiments utilizing the context effects (CEs) paradigm, we examined effects on associative memory observed when unitization of memoranda is not readily achieved, due to domain differences between stimuli or to asynchronous presentation. In both cases, the standard associative-binding CE of better recognition of probes under contextual reinstatement (i.e., higher hit rates for pairs of repeated probes vs. re-paired probes) was only found when participants explicitly recognized the context stimuli. These results contrast with earlier findings that for concurrent encoding of same-domain stimuli, CEs are obtained even in the absence of explicit memory for contexts. The contrast supports the assertion that in the absence of unitization associative memory is dependent on recollection, while unitized associations may be supported by familiarity strength. (Contains 4 figures.)

Raven matrices are used for assessing fluid intelligence and the intellectual level of groups with low intelligence. Our study addresses qualitative analysis of information processing in Raven matrices performance among individuals with intellectual disability with that of their typically developed (TD) counterparts. Twenty-three adults with non-specific intellectual disability (NSID), 15 adults with Down syndrome (DS) and 35 children with TD matched for mental age, participated. Participants solved the Raven's Colored Progressive Matrices and five items from the Raven Standard Progressive Matrices while having their eye movements monitored. The overall percent of correct answers was significantly higher for the TD group compared to two ID group. Comparison of the eye movement pattern of each group indicated that the TD group spent more time on the matrices before shifting to the options, than the two ID groups. The TD group made significantly less switches from one rejoins to another, than the ID groups. The difference in the scanning pattern between the TD and the ID groups is interpreted as a reflection of two different types of strategies, Constructive matching and Response elimination, respectively. There were no differences in eye scanning between participants with NSID and those with DS. (Contains 5 figures.)

Eighteen adults with intellectual disability (ID) and 20 children with typical development (TD) matched for cognitive level, participated in this study. Participants solved perceptual and conceptual analogies (from the Conceptual and Perceptual Analogical Modifiability Test-CPAM) while having their eye movements monitored. As predicted, the overall percent of correct answers was significantly higher for the TD group compared to that of the ID group. Comparison of the eye movement pattern of each group while solving the analogies revealed that in addition to the quantitative difference between the groups, there is a qualitative difference in the process of solving the analogies. The difference in the scanning pattern between the TD and the ID groups is interpreted as a reflection of two different types of strategies, Constructive matching and Response elimination, respectively. (Contains 9 figures.)

The influence of contextual similarity on children's recognition memory performance was examined using a retroactive interference paradigm. In the study, 9- and 12-year-olds were randomly assigned to one of two contextual conditions. In both conditions, target and interfering information were presented in distinctive contexts by using different modalities (pictures and words, respectively). However, in one condition the test was presented in the same context as the target information (picture-word-picture [PWP] condition), whereas in the other condition the test was presented in the same context as the interfering information (picture-word-word [PWW] condition). Performance in these conditions was compared with performance in a noninterference control condition (picture-word [P-W]). As predicted, overall recognition performance in the PWP condition was significantly better than in the PWW condition. However, whereas in the PWP condition there was no age difference in performance, in the PWW condition the 12-year-old group produced significantly more hits and fewer false alarms than the 9-year-old group. The theoretical implications of the results are discussed in reference to the effortful engagement of developmentally dependent executive control processes. (Contains 2 figures and 1 table.)

Explores whether indirect measures of memory are associated with age. Results, based on 30 younger and 30 older adults, suggest that direct measures, such as number of words recalled, were related to age, whereas indirect measures (consistency of order of presentation of words recalled) were not associated with age. (RJM)

Learning and retention of procedural versus declarative memory tasks were examined with 26 young adults with mild mental retardation and 27 school children matched for mental age. The MR adults performed more poorly on both types of tasks, although learning rate and retention over time were comparable, thereby maintaining the control group's advantage. (Author/DB)