Traumatic brain injury (TBI) often results in long-term negative effects in attention, memory, perception, language, and executive functioning. Children and adolescents are the most vulnerable as TBIs are the leading cause of death and disability for this age group. Despite these high proportions and detrimental effects, few studies have utilized a developmentally appropriate, standardized measure to assess executive functioning within a pediatric TBI population. The current study compared children and adolescents who had sustained a TBI with a non-injured, matched control group on executive functioning using the Comprehensive Trail Making Test (CTMT). Data analyses revealed significant differences between groups on the CTMT Composite Index, each individual trail, and a combination of trails but with no within-group differences. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed that a single-factor model was a better fit for the present sample of TBI participants than the two-factor model evident within the CTMT standardization sample.
This study identified the subtypes of psychosocial functioning in children who had sustained traumatic brain injury using the Behavior Assessment System for Children, Second Edition. Participants (N = 91) were aged 6-20. Using hierarchical agglomerative clustering techniques, a reliable typology emerged that consisted of two subtypes, which were labeled as Normal and Pervasive Emotional Difficulties. Using further exploratory analyses, other less statistically reliable subtypes were also observed, which were thought to have clinical significance. These were labeled as Mild Externalizing/Depression, Mild Externalizing/Attention Problems, Mild Depression, and Mild Anxiety. The majority of participants were assigned to the Normal subtype. Relationships between subtypes and other variables, including gender, time elapsed since injury, age at injury, and age at testing were also analyzed, with time elapsed since injury being the only variable to significantly differentiate the subtypes.
Children with specific learning disabilities (SLD) have disparate neuropsychological processing deficits that interfere with academic achievement in spelling, writing fluency, and/or written expression (WE). Although there are multiple potential causes of WE SLD, there is a paucity of research exploring this critical academic skill from a neuropsychological perspective. This study examined the neuropsychological profiles of WE SLD subtypes defined using the concordance-discordance model (C-DM) of SLD identification. Participants were drawn from a sample of 283 children (194 boys, 89 girls) aged 6 years to 16 years old (M(age) = 9.58 years, SD = 2.29 years) referred for comprehensive neuropsychological evaluations in school settings and subsequently selected based on C-DM determined spelling, writing fluency, and WE SLD. WE SLD subtypes differed on several psychomotor, memory, and executive function measures (F range = 2.48-5.07, p range = .049 to <.001), suggesting that these children exhibit distinct patterns of neuropsychological processing strengths and weaknesses. Findings have relevance for differential diagnosis of WE subtypes, discriminating WE SLD subtypes from low WE achievement, and developing differentiated evidence-based instruction and intervention for children with WE SLD. Limitations and future research will be addressed.
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