FASD: Alcohol during pregnancy causes impaired social skills in children

A recent study published in Child Neuropsychology has found that drinking alcohol while pregnant means your child is more likely to develop issues with social skills as they grow older.

The results of the study indicate that children with prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) who do not have a global intellectual disability are at high risk of developing significant problems in a broad array of cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and social domains.

125 children aged between 6 and 12 participated in the study, 97 of whom met diagnostic criteria for a Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD).

The children underwent a comprehensive multi-informant assessment of neurocognitive, emotional, social, behavioural, and adaptive functioning.

The results of the study indicated that the children who had prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE), returned significantly poorer scores compared to the non-exposed group on tests measuring executive functioning (the processes that help us connect past experience with present action, the skills we use for organization and planning), attention, working /visuospatial memory, linguistic abstraction, adaptive behaviour, emotional/behavioural functioning, and social cognition (understanding of why people do the things that they do).

The study showed that while the children with PAE and the non-exposed children attributed hostile intentions towards provocative behaviors by their peers, e.g. pushing and shoving, the children affected by PAE were more likely to attribute hostile intentions to situations that did not involve physical provocation e.g. asking if they can play and being told 'no'.

The parents of children with PAE also gave greater reports of inattentive and hyperactive/impulsive behavior and the children were shown to also be more likely to show depressive symptoms.

The group of children with PAE were also shown to have more social problems according to assessments involving parents and teachers. These results maintained their significance past controlling for IQ, demonstrating that relying on IQ alone to guide parental, peer, and school expectations may be misleading.

The study also notes that this may also suggest that the negative effects of PAE are above and beyond the control of intelligence.

The study concludes by suggesting that the results mean it is becoming increasingly more evident that there is a pressing need for early identification of social issues related to prenatal alcohol exposure and intervention in order to take advantage of the developing brain's plasticity and to maximise the likelihood of effecting meaningful functional improvement.

More information: Justin L. Quattlebaum & Mary J. O'Connora "Higher functioning children with prenatal alcohol exposure: Is there a specific neurocognitive profile?" Child Neuropsychology: A Journal on Normal and Abnormal Development in Childhood and Adolescence Volume 19, Issue 6, 2013 DOI: 10.1080/09297049.2012.713466

Autism: Does Impaired Attention explain Autism symptoms?

Autism is marked by several core features—impairments in social functioning, difficulty communicating, and a restriction of interests.

Though researchers have attempted to pinpoint factors that might account for all three of these characteristics, the underlying causes are still unclear.

Now, a new study suggests that two key attentional abilities—moving attention fluidly and orienting to social information—can be checked off the list, as neither seems to account for the diversity of symptoms we find in people with autism.

Kami Koldewyn

"This is not to say that every aspect of attention is fine in all children with autism—children with autism very often have attentional disorders as well," explain psychological scientists and lead researchers Jason Fischer and Kami Koldewyn of MIT.

"However, our study suggests that attention impairments are not a key component of autism itself."

The study is published in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Attention has long been targeted as a possible causal mechanism in autism research: "Problems with attention early in life could have far-reaching consequences," say Fischer and Koldewyn.

"For example, if young children with autism don't pay close attention to the behaviours of the people around them, they might never learn to read body language and other social cues."

But much of the previous research on attention, social learning, and autism had been mixed.

"Some of the most fundamental questions remain debated," Fischer and Koldewyn explain.

Jason Fischer

"Our goal was to conduct careful, systematic, relatively large-scale studies of some of the mental processes most often implicated in autism to discover which of them are actually disrupted in autism and which are not."

To investigate this, Fischer, Koldewyn, and their team had children with high-functioning autism and children without autism complete an attention task while tracking their eye movements.

Critically, the participants were matched on age and IQ before participating in the study to rule out the possible influence of global developmental delays that aren't specific to autism.

The task was intended to answer two questions:

• Are children with autism less able to re-orient to a new stimulus (a plausible precursor of restricted interests)? and,
• Are children with autism slower to respond to social stimuli, such as faces?

Overall, children with and without autism showed clear signatures of shifting attention and orienting to social stimuli, but there was no difference in either ability between the two groups, challenging the hypothesis that impaired attention might be at the root of autism symptoms.

Fischer and Koldewyn underscore that these aren't simply null results—they do contribute in a meaningful way to our understanding of autism.

"Understanding which mental capacities are intact in autism is not only encouraging, but also helps families and educators design effective interventions to work on those cognitive skills that are true areas of weakness in autism."

While finding those true cognitive impairments, and their antecedents, has proved difficult, it's not for lack of effort.

"We believe that the crux of autism lies in a difficulty interpreting the nuanced and complex information present in real life social situations," Fischer and Koldewyn conclude.

"We plan to test children with autism in more natural scenarios than the typical laboratory environment in order to understand how social context interacts with attentional abilities in autism."

Researchers unravel genetics of dyslexia and language impairment

A new study of the genetic origins of dyslexia and other learning disabilities could allow for earlier diagnoses and more successful interventions, according to researchers at Yale School of Medicine.

Many students now are not diagnosed until high school, at which point treatments are less effective.

The study is published online and in the July print issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics.

Jeffrey R. Gruen

Senior author Jeffrey R. Gruen, M.D., professor of pediatrics, genetics, and investigative medicine at Yale, and colleagues analyzed data from more than 10,000 children born in 1991-1992 who were part of the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) conducted by investigators at the University of Bristol (UK).

Gruen and his team used the ALSPAC data to unravel the genetic components of reading and verbal language.

In the process, they identified genetic variants that can predispose children to dyslexia and language impairment, increasing the likelihood of earlier diagnosis and more effective interventions.

Dyslexia and language impairment are common learning disabilities that make reading and verbal language skills difficult.

Both disorders have a substantial genetic component, but despite years of study, determining the root cause had been difficult.

In previous studies, Gruen and his team found that dopamine-related genes ANKK1 and DRD2 are involved in language processing.

In further non-genetic studies, they found that prenatal exposure to nicotine has a strong negative affect on both reading and language processing.

They had also previously found that a gene called DCDC2 was linked to dyslexia. In this new study, Gruen and colleagues looked deeper within the DCDC2 gene to pinpoint the specific parts of the gene that are responsible for dyslexia and language impairment.

They found that some variants of a gene regulator called READ1 (regulatory element associated with dyslexia1) within the DCDC2 gene are associated with problems in reading performance while other variants are strongly associated with problems in verbal language performance.

Gruen said these variants interact with a second dyslexia risk gene called KIAA0319. "When you have risk variants in both READ1 and KIAA0319, it can have a multiplier effect on measures of reading, language, and IQ," he said.

"People who have these variants have a substantially increased likelihood of developing dyslexia or language impairment."

"These findings are helping us to identify the pathways for fluent reading, the components of those pathways; and how they interact," said Gruen.

"We now hope to be able to offer a pre-symptomatic diagnostic panel, so we can identify children at risk before they get into trouble at school. Almost three-quarters of these children will be reading at grade level if they get early intervention, and we know that intervention can have a positive lasting effect."

More information: dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ajhg.2013.05.008

Dyslexia: Cognitive subtypes of dyslexia

Recent research into Dyslexia and the large range or variations in perception and experience accorded to those who have this condition.

Different theories conceptualise dyslexia as either a phonological, attentional, auditory, magnocellular, or automatisation deficit.

Such heterogeneity suggests the existence of yet unrecognised subtypes of dyslexics suffering from distinguishable deficits.

The purpose of the study was to identify cognitive subtypes of dyslexia.

Out of 642 children screened for reading ability 49 dyslexics and 48 controls were tested for phonological awareness, auditory discrimination, motion detection, visual attention, and rhythm imitation.

A combined cluster and discriminant analysis approach revealed three clusters of dyslexics with different cognitive deficits.

Compared to reading-unimpaired children;

• cluster no. 1 had worse phonological awareness; 
• cluster no. 2 had higher attentional costs; 
• cluster no. 3 performed worse in the phonological, auditory, and magno-cellular tasks. 

These results indicate that dyslexia may result from distinct cognitive impairments.

As a consequence, prevention and remediation programmes should be specifically targeted for the individual child's deficit pattern.

You can access the research paper here at PubMed.gov

VOCAs: Assistive Technology for People with Speech Impairments

“More important than the right to speech is the right to speak.” The world renowned British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking knows this exactly to be true.

Having been robbed of his ability to speak to a motor neuron disease, Stephen Hawking had to struggle with crude communication systems just to be able to tell his wants and needs…until he discovered VOCAs.

If it had not been for VOCAs, Stephen Hawking’s insights into the nature of space and time would not have been known.

This assistive technology has allowed him to communicate, write and publish his works, and give lectures to live audiences around the world in spite of losing his ability to speak.

In this post we will explore what VOCAs are and how these instruments give people an ability that most of us take for granted.

What are VOCAs?
VOCAs refer to voice output communication aids. These are electronic devices used by people who are either unable to speak or whose speech is difficult to understand.

VOCAs are used for augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). The term refers to different communication methods used by people who are unable to speak, have difficulty speaking, or have restrictions in understanding spoken or written communication.

Who uses VOCAs?
VOCAs are used by people who have limited or absent speech to communicate with the people around them. These include people who suffer from neurological disorders, such as autism, cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, and epilepsy.

VOCAs are also used to help an individual regain his ability to speak that might have been lost due to stroke, brain damage, or a motor neuron disease. An example of a motor neuron disease is Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, which Stephen Hawking was diagnosed with.

Are there different types of VOCAs?
Just as there are different types of people who use VOCAs, there are also different types of VOCAs. These vary in all shapes, sizes, and complexity.

Dedicated Communication Devices vs. Communication Software Programs

VOCAs may be dedicated communication devices or laptop computers with specialized software installed.

Dedicated communication devices are designed primarily for communication, while computer based VOCAs are typically programmed to include additional features, such as an environmental control system.

An environmental control system allows the VOCA user to independently turn on electronic devices, such as the lights or television, via remote control.

Speech
Some VOCAs use digitized speech or a recorded natural speech of a person for voice output. Frequently used words, phrases, or sentences are recorded and stored into the device by somebody else other than the VOCA user. The VOCA user then pushes a button or turns a switch to play the message.

A VOCA with digitized speech can only say what someone has already recorded into it. However, they are easier to program than the VOCAs that use synthesized speech.

VOCAs that use synthesized speech make use of a speech synthesizer to produce artificial speech. These VOCAs use text to speech systems. This type of device is more flexible because users are not dependent on pre-recorded messages on their device. The speech synthesizer can say any combination of words, phrases, or sentences that the user chooses.

Representation of Messages
VOCAs may use text-based or symbol-based programs to represent messages on the device. Symbol-based VOCAs use pictures or symbols to represent messages which are supplied through symbol organizational systems. This type of device is typically used by individuals whose literacy level makes it difficult for them to use text-based VOCAs.

Text-based VOCAs typically have a keyboard for entering messages. They often feature a “word prediction” facility which helps reduce the number of keystrokes a user has to make. It also functions as a support tool for people whose spelling is not consistently reliable.

How are VOCAs accessed and controlled?

VOCAs can be adjusted according to its user’s needs.

Buttons
Some people that use VOCAs have fine motor skills and they are able to press buttons on the devices. Adjusting the sensitivity of buttons and keyguards can help VOCA users that may have limited motor skills. Keyguards are plates that sit above the buttons of a VOCA device or a keyboard. They help the user to press the right key with more precision.
Switches

People that have limited fine motor skills input messages to a VOCA device through visual scanning. This technique is used by Stephen Hawking. Professor Hawking uses a switch to move through the letters on an onscreen grid. He then presses the switch to select the letter that he wants.

Other Access Methods used in VOCAs
Other access methods include:

• a standard mouse;
• mouse that can be controlled by the head;
• joysticks; and
• rollerballs.

Conclusion
It is truly hard to imagine living a life of silence, where your thoughts and dreams stay locked within you. VOCAs have given people with communication problems the freedom to express themselves and live life fully.

Dancing Giraffe: Internet-based Disability Community

Warning…in January 2012, a Giraffe will be dancing in Essex, England, UK!

What is Dancing Giraffe? - An innovative internet community site: providing 'joined up' communication to people with disabilities and their carers.

Nothing like Dancing Giraffe currently exists. This website aims to not only support and inform, but to challenge, inspire and empower disabled people.

It will include engaging editorial and comprehensive content, up-to-date reference and signposting together with user forums and social media.

How do they know so much about what disabled people want and need? Within the Dancing Giraffe, a number of the team are disabled, so they are providing a site that they've always wanted to have and use themselves!

Mission Statement

The aim of Dancing Giraffe is to provide a platform to inspire, inform and represent the disabled community.

Through this internet portal, Dancing Giraffe will offer support and advice for people with disabilities, their carer/s, professionals, organisations and the media.

It will bring together comprehensive information and data about services and facilities available and will present them in one easy to access place. Dancing Giraffe will also provide a forum for all disabled people to discuss and compare access issues and solutions.

Dancing Giraffe is a Community Interest Company. This means they operate under a charitable status and are a 'not-for-profit' group.