The aim of this study was to assess the effects of chronic iron deficiency on neuropsychological traits in infants. We established the nutritional iron status and assessed the neuropsychological characteristics of 58 Mexican 14- to 18-month-old infants. The Bayley Scales of Infant Development, preschool language scales and an environmental sound perception task designed expressly for the study, were used. The infants' mothers were asked to fill out 2 questionnaires concerning their child's sociodemographic background. Six different neuropsychological domains were analyzed. Results showed that the chronic iron deficiency group did show significantly lower scores on language, environmental sound perception, and motor measures, when compared with infants with normal nutritional iron status at 6 and 14 to 18 months. Our conclusion is that the development of language and motor skills and environmental sound perception appeared to be sensitive to the effects of chronic iron deficiency in infants.

This article presents a tool for assessing the early numerical abilities of Spanish-speaking Mexican preschoolers. The Numerical Abilities Test, from the Evaluación Neuropsicológica Infantil-Preescolar (ENI-P), evaluates four core abilities of number development: magnitude comparison, counting, subitizing, and basic calculation. We evaluated 307 Spanish-speaking Mexican children aged 2 years 6 months to 4 years 11 months. Appropriate internal consistency and test-retest reliability were demonstrated. We also investigated the effect of age, children's school attendance, maternal education, and sex on children's numerical scores. The results showed that the four subtests captured development across ages. Critically, maternal education had an impact on children's performance in three out of the four subtests, but there was no effect associated with children's school attendance or sex. These results suggest that the Numerical Abilities Test is a reliable instrument for Spanish-speaking preschoolers. We discuss the implications of our outcomes for numerical development.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is a neurodevelopmental disorder with three presentations: inattentive, hyperactive/impulsive and combined. These may represent an independent disease entity. Therefore, the therapeutic approach must be focused on their neurobiological, psychological and social characteristics. To date, there is no comprehensive analysis of the efficacy of different treatments for each presentation of ADHD and each stage of development. This is as narrative overview of scientific papers that summarize the most recent findings and identify the most effective pharmacological and psychosocial treatments by ADHD presentation and age range. Evidence suggests that methylphenidate is the safest and most effective drug for the clinical management of children, adolescents and adults. Atomoxetine is effective in preschoolers and maintains similar efficacy to methylphenidate in adults, whereas guanfacine has proven to be an effective monotherapy for adults and is a worthy adjuvant for the management of cognitive symptoms. The psychosocial treatments with the best results in preschoolers are behavioral interventions that include training of primary caregivers. In adolescents, the combination of cognitive and cognitive-behavioral therapies has shown the best results, whereas cognitive-behavioral interventions are the most effective in adults. Pharmacological and psychosocial treatments must be adjusted to the ADHD presentation and its neurocognitive characteristics through the patient’s development.

Neuropsychological tests (targeting cognitive, linguistic, motor, and executive abilities) are grouped in neuropsychological domains that are thought to be stable through adulthood. However, this assumption does not always hold true, particularly during young children’s early developmental phase. Here, we explored how the neuropsychological profile of typical Spanish-speaking preschoolers varied and consolidated with age. We recruited 643 monolingual Latin-American children from Mexico, Colombia, and Guatemala, with ages spanning from 30 to 71 months of age, and applied a novel neuropsychological examination which combined a total of 52 tests covering five classical neuropsychological domains: receptive, expressive, attention/memory, processing, and executive functions. These tests’ scores uncovered a correlational structure across neuropsychological functions that could not be explained by chance. Notably, these correlations’ overall strength, but not their interdependence across domains, dramatically increased with age. Moreover, by applying conventional clustering techniques to classify the experimental data, we found a stable representation of two clusters of children with distinctive traits, with cultural factors contributing to this classification scheme. We also found that the tasks were well organized in a network of abilities, where nodes with highest highest interconnectedness were those that required multimodal processing. These results contribute to our understanding of children’s ‘normal’ development and could help identify how failure in particular functions forecasts the emergence of neurodevelopmental disorders. Our analytic methods might become useful to characterize individual differences and improve educational practices and interventions.

Efecto de la deficiencia de hierro sobre el desarrollo neuropsicológico en lactantes Effect of iron deficiency on neuropsychological development in infants