Advancing knowledge of human development, developmental disabilities, and neurodegenerative diseases.
Working memory is a basic cognitive process that predicts higher-level skills. A central question in theories of working memory development is the generality of the mechanisms proposed to explain improvements in performance.
Millions of people globally are at high risk for neurodegenerative disorders, infertility or having children with a disability as a result of the Fragile X (FX) premutation, a genetic abnormality in FMR1 that is underdiagnosed.
Probability Learning: Changes in Behavior Across Time and Development Legend: Left: For each trial in the task, a coin was hidden behind a rock, and participants had to guess where the coin was. There was a pattern to be learned across trials: Coins most often appeared behind Rock 5 (70% of the time), followed by …
Children who experience early adversity often develop emotion regulatory problems, but little is known about the mechanisms that mediate this relation. We tested whether general associative learning processes contribute to associations between adversity, in the form of child maltreatment, and negative behavioral outcomes.
Language is used to identify objects in many different ways. For example, an apple can be identified using its name, color, and other attributes. Skilled language comprehension requires listeners to flexibly shift between different dimensions.
Skeletal fragility is a complication of phenylketonuria (PKU). A diet containing amino acids compared to one with glycomacropeptide reduces bone size and strength in mice.
Children’s drawings have long been used to assess aspects of general cognitive functioning, intelligence, perceptual motor development, and even socio-emotional development. Recently, practitioners have begun to perform drawing assessments using tablets and other forms of media; yet there has been little to attempt to validate these methods.
85 children with cerebral palsy (43 girls, 42 boys) were followed longitudinally between 18 and 54 months. Children were seen between 2-8 times, for a total of 322 data points.
Alexander disease (AxD) is a primary genetic disorder of astrocytes caused by dominant mutations in the gene encoding the intermediate filament (IF) protein GFAP. This disease is characterized by excessive accumulation of GFAP, known as Rosenthal fibers, within astrocytes.
Verbal trait disorders encompass a wide range of conditions and are marked by deficits in five domains that impair a person’s ability to communicate: speech, language, reading, spelling, and writing. Nonword repetition is a robust endophenotype for verbal trait disorders that is sensitive to cognitive processes critical to verbal development, including auditory processing, phonological working memory, and motor planning and programming.
