ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: The involvement of the central nervous system is not rare in rheumatoid diseases. Even though children with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) may face academic difficulties until adulthood, very few studies have evaluated potential cognitive disorders in these patients. The present research aims to thoroughly investigate the cognitive and neuropsychological functioning of these patients. METHODS: We measured the cognitive profile of JIA patients via their neuropsychological profile, implicit memory and social cognition skills, and estimated their academic performance using reading and mathematics tests. We recruited 21 children with JIA aged 6 to 17 years-old (M = 11.01, SD = 3.30) and 21 healthy children matched in age, gender, academic level (same school class) and socioeconomic status. RESULTS: Our results showed that the cognitive profile and estimated academic ability of JIA patients are similar to those of their peers. These results support the hypothesis that children with JIA have the same cognitive predispositions to succeed at school as any other pupil. CONCLUSION: Comparing our results with the existing literature, we propose complementary hypotheses for further research. Longitudinal studies seem to be necessary to understand the psychosocial and cognitive processes involved in the development of children with JIA.
Subject(s)
Arthritis, Juvenile/psychology , Adolescent , Child , Female , Humans , Male , Neuropsychological TestsABSTRACT
Efficient reading relies on expertise in the visual word form area, with abnormalities in the functional specialization of this area observed in individuals with developmental dyslexia. We have investigated event related potentials in print tuning in adults with dyslexia, based on their N170 response at 135-255 ms. Control and dyslexic adults performed a lexical decision task with symbol strings and four sets of word-like stimuli (consonant strings, pseudowords, low frequency words and high frequency words). N170 tuning was observed in the control group, with larger left occipito-temporal negativities for word-like stimuli than for symbol strings. In contrast, N170 specialization was lacking in dyslexics, suggesting no visual expertise for print. Moreover, behavioral data indicated that adults with dyslexia had longer latencies and more errors for pseudowords than for other stimuli, suggesting a persistent phonological deficit in these individuals. These findings suggest that altered decoding abilities may disrupt perceptual expertise for print. The results are discussed in the context of the phonological mapping deficit theory.
Subject(s)
Brain Mapping , Dyslexia/physiopathology , Evoked Potentials/physiology , Pattern Recognition, Visual/physiology , Adult , Case-Control Studies , Electroencephalography , Female , France , Humans , Male , Photic Stimulation , Printing , Reaction Time , Vocabulary , Young AdultABSTRACT
The time-based resource-sharing model (P. Barrouillet, S. Bernardin, & V. Camos, 2004) assumes that during complex working memory span tasks, attention is frequently and surreptitiously switched from processing to reactivate decaying memory traces before their complete loss. Three experiments involving children from 5 to 14 years of age investigated the role of this reactivation process in developmental differences in working memory spans. Though preschoolers seem to adopt a serial control without any attempt to refresh stored items when engaged in processing, the reactivation process is efficient from age 7 onward and increases in efficiency until late adolescence, underpinning a sizable part of developmental differences.
