Adolescent-parent relations in Hong Kong: parenting styles, emotional autonomy, and school achievement.

This 4-phase study of Hong Kong Chinese adolescent-parent relationships (906 adolescents and 1,091 parents) revealed the following: (a) Adolescents and their parents differ in their perceptions of parenting style. (b) Autonomy is negatively associated with parents' perceived authoritative parenting style and school achievement. (c) Neither parenting style nor measures of parents' beliefs in training their children (R. Chao, 1994) are associated with self-reports of school achievement. However, (d) parents of students from the highest (Band 1) academically oriented schools in Hong Kong rated themselves as higher in authoritativeness and lower in authoritarianism than parents of adolescents from the lowest academically oriented (Band 5) schools. Findings are discussed in relation to posited differences in adolescent-parent relationships in Western and Chinese cultures.

Are speech perception deficits associated with developmental dyslexia?

Phonological awareness and phoneme identification tasks were administered to dyslexic children and both chronological age (CA) and reading-level (RL) comparison groups. Dyslexic children showed less sharply defined categorical perception of a bath-path continuum varying voice onset time when compared to the CA but not the RL group. The dyslexic children were divided into two subgroups based on phoneme awareness. Dyslexics with low phonemic awareness made poorer /b/-/p/ distinctions than both CA and RL groups, but dyslexics with normal phonemic awareness did not. Examination of individual profiles revealed that the majority of subjects in each group exhibited normal categorical perception. However, 7 of 25 dyslexics had abnormal identification functions, compared to 1 subject in the CA group and 3 in the RL group. The results suggest that some dyslexic children have a perceptual deficit that may interfere with processing of phonological information. Speech perception difficulties may also be partially related to reading experience.

A longitudinal study of cognitive functioning in patients with classical galactosaemia, including a cohort treated with oral uridine.

Existing longitudinal data on patients with classical galactosaemia suggests that neurocognitive functioning is impaired and, in isolated case reports, may show a decline in performance over time. The present study explored whether there are long-term changes in cognitive abilities in patients with galactosaemia and whether oral uridine can improve neurocognitive performance. Thirty-five patients (18 males, 17 females), 29 of whom received oral uridine powder at 150 mg/kg per day (divided dose, three times daily), were evaluated over a 2-5-year period with the Woodcock-Johnson Revised Cognitive Abilities Test, three academic achievement tests, and the Beery Test of Visual Motor Integration. Results showed that the uridine cohort and a comparison group that received only dietary restriction made small gains in cognitive performance over the treatment period and the size of the gains did not differ significantly. Seven subjects who started uridine prior to the age of 14 months did not differ significantly in their cognitive test scores at an average age of 3.5 years from a group of older children who had begun treatment at 4.5 years of age. These results provide no support for any developmental or uridine-treatment-related change in cognitive functioning for this sample of galactosaemic subjects.

Models of speech perception and phonological processing in reading.

Multiple measures of speech perception, phonological awareness, naming speed, verbal short-term memory, and word reading were concurrently administered to 136 third- and fourth-grade children. Structural equation modeling was used to contrast 5 models of the relations of speech perception and phonological processing skills to reading with IQ controlled. The best-fitting model, the Indirect Model, was one in which the effect of speech perception on reading was mediated by its relations with phonological processing abilities. Naming speed was particularly highly associated with speech perception, possible evidence for the Motor Theory. Phonological awareness was also substantially correlated with speech perception.

On the bases of two subtypes of developmental [corrected] dyslexia.

This study examined whether there are different subtypes of developmental dyslexia. The subjects were 51 dyslexic children (reading below the 30th percentile in isolated word recognition), 51 age-matched normal readers, and 27 younger normal readers who scored in the same range as the dyslexics on word recognition. Using methods developed by Castles and Coltheart (1993), we identified two subgroups who fit the profiles commonly termed "surface" and "phonological" dyslexia. Surface subjects were relatively poorer in reading exception words compared to nonwords; phonological dyslexics showed the opposite pattern. However, most dyslexics were impaired on reading both exception words and nonwords compared to same-aged normal readers. Whereas the surface dyslexics' performance was very similar to that of younger normal readers, the phonological dyslexics' was not. The two dyslexic groups also exhibited a double dissociation on two validation tasks: surface subjects were impaired on a task involving orthographic knowledge but not one involving phonology; phonological dyslexics showed the opposite pattern. The data support the conclusion that there are at least two subtypes of developmental dyslexia. Although these patterns have been taken as evidence for the dual-route model, we provide an alternative account of them within the Seidenberg and McClelland (1989) connectionist model. The connectionist model accounts for why dyslexics tend to be impaired on both exception words and nonwords; it also suggests that the subtypes may arise from multiple underlying deficits. We conclude that performance on exception words and nonwords is not sufficient to identify the basis of dyslexic behavior; rather, information about children's performance on other tasks, their remediation experiences, and the computational mechanisms that give rise to impairments must be taken into account as well.

Cognitive functioning, neurologic status and brain imaging in classical galactosemia.

A historical group of 45 children (4-18 years) and adults (18-39 years) with classical galactosemia had deficits of cognitive function that were variable and not related to the age at diagnosis or to severity of illness at presentation. There was a trend for patients to score highest on visual processing tasks. The standardized tests of speech and memory skills fell within the same range as the Broad Cognitive Ability score, indicating that the speech and language deficits may be part of a more global set of cognitive impairments. Scores on the Beery Visual Motor Integration and Block Design Tests fell in approximately the same range as other cognitive abilities. In addition, there was a high incidence of abnormality detected on MRI and 12 patients had neurologic symptoms that included ataxia, tremor and dysmetria. These abnormalities did not correlate with the age at diagnosis, severity of illness at presentation or scores on cognitive testing. The pathophysiology of neurologic and neuropsychologic impairments remains unknown. Since these appear to be unrelated to the duration of galactose exposure, other factors impacting on outcome need to be understood so that strategies can be developed to improve what appears to be a global impairment of cognitive function.

Correlation of cognitive, neurologic, and ovarian outcome with the Q188R mutation of the galactose-1-phosphate uridyltransferase gene.

This study was conducted to determine whether there is a genotype/phenotype correlation between aspects of cognitive, neurologic, and ovarian outcome in patients with galactosemia and the Q188R mutation of the galactose-1-phosphate uridyltransferase gene. The results showed that the Q188R mutation was found in 72% of alleles: 38 patients were homozygous and 21 were heterozygous for Q188R; eight patients did not have the mutation. The mean Broad Cognitive score for the group homozygous for Q188R was 75 (SD = 16), which was not statistically different from the outcome for the heterozygous group (mean score, 67; SD = 25) or the negative group (mean score, 88; SD = 21). Tremor, ataxia, and dysmetria were found in 12 subjects, and there was no association with Q188R status. Similarly, there was no association of this mutation with the development of primary amenorrhea (8 subjects) versus secondary amenorrhea (found in 14 women). Our findings suggests that the variability of outcome for patients with classic galactosemia cannot be explained by Q188R status alone, at least with regard to cognitive functioning, presence of neurologic symptoms, and timing of the onset of ovarian failure.