Exploring the Components of Advanced Theory of Mind in Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Performance of a group of 35 youth and adults with High-Functioning Autism (HFA) was compared with a typical developing (TD) group on three Advanced Theory of Mind tests. The distinction between the social-cognitive and social-perceptual components of Theory of Mind was also explored. The HFA group had more difficulties in all tasks. Performance on the two social-cognitive tests was highly correlated in the HFA group, but these were not related with the social-perceptual component. These results suggest that the youth with HFA have difficulties on all the components of social knowledge but may be using different underlying cognitive abilities depending on the nature of the task.

Psychotic-like experiences and depressive symptoms in a community sample of adolescents.

PURPOSE: Studies of psychotic-like experiences (PLEs) within community samples of adolescents have explored predominantly positive experiences. There is a paucity of research examining the prevalence and correlates of negative PLEs, and whether particular subtypes of negative PLEs can be identified among the general population of adolescents. This study examined the association of both positive and negative PLEs with depressive symptoms, including detailed analysis of subtypes of positive and negative psychosis dimensions. METHOD: A community sample of 777 adolescents (50.9% girls: mean age 14.4 years) completed a questionnaire assessing positive and negative PLEs and depressive symptoms. RESULTS: Principal component factor analysis identified four factors of positive symptoms (persecutory ideation, grandiose thinking, first-rank/hallucinatory experiences and self-referential thinking), and three factors of negative symptoms (social withdrawal, affective flattening, and avolition). Depressive symptoms were associated positively with persecutory ideation, first-rank/hallucinatory experiences, social withdrawal, and avolition, whereas grandiose thinking related negatively with depressive symptoms. Neither self-referential thinking nor affective flattening related to self-reported depression. CONCLUSIONS: These findings support the view that not all types of positive and negative PLEs in adolescence are associated with depression and, therefore, they may not confer the same vulnerability for psychotic disorders.

Adaptive behaviour in Angelman syndrome: its profile and relationship to age.

BACKGROUND: Angelman syndrome (AS) is a neurodevelopmental disorder usually caused by an anomaly in the maternally inherited chromosome 15. The main features are severe intellectual disability, speech impairment, ataxia, epilepsy, sleep disorder and a behavioural phenotype that reportedly includes happy disposition, attraction to/fascination with water and hypermotoric behaviour. METHOD: We studied the level of adaptive behaviour and the adaptive behavioural profile in the areas of 'motor skills', 'language and communication', 'personal life skills' and 'community life skills' in a group of 25 individuals with genetically confirmed AS, to determine whether there is a specific adaptive behaviour profile. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: None of the individuals, whatever their chronological age, had reached a developmental age of 3 years. A specific adaptive behaviour profile was found, with 'personal life skills' emerging as relative strengths and 'social and communication skills' as weaknesses.

Neurological soft signs in adolescents with poor performance on the continous performance test: markers of liability for schizophrenia spectrum disorders?

There is much evidence that neurological soft signs (NSS) are highly prevalent in both adults and children with schizophrenia. In addition, they have been detected as early precursors of a schizophrenic outcome in at-risk subjects. Such findings point to the possible value of NSS as neurointegrative markers in schizophrenia which has been hypothesized to be a neurodevelopmental disease. In our study we used a biobehavioral criterion to select the 'at-risk' group, a sustained attentional deficit as measured by the continuous performance test (CPT). We compared 140 normal adolescents with 162 'CPT-linked vulnerable' adolescents (index subjects) on a battery for the assessment of NSS (including laterality), IQ, frontal lobe function and schizotypy. An association was found between NSS and attentional deficit. Furthermore, index subjects with NSS were characterized by lower IQ scores, poorer performance on frontal lobe tests and greater problems with social interaction. There was also a trend for an association between male sex and both left-handedness and NSS.

Sustained attention deficit in young schizophrenic and schizotypic men.

We studied groups of 39 schizophrenic subjects, 35 schizotypic subjects, and 33 control subjects, comparing them on a standard sustained attention task called the Continuous Performance Test (identical pairs version). The expected negative relationship between performance on sustained attention and psychopathology was confirmed by differences among the three groups which were in the direction predicted, although only the difference between the schizophrenic group and the other two groups was significant. This finding adds evidence to the view from research on high risk and attention with schizophrenic subjects that subtle attention deficits are present among subjects within the schizophrenia spectrum. Consequently, our results can be understood as supporting a dimensional theory of psychopathology.

Ventricular enlargement and neuropsychological testing in schizophrenia.

The Ventricular Brain Ratio was computed in a group of 42 young chronic schizophrenics (age range: 17-45). The patients also completed a battery of neuropsychological tests: four WAIS subscales, the Benton test and the Trail Making Test. Although patients as a whole showed the expected ventricular enlargement and neuropsychological impairment when compared to control groups, no correlation was found between the two measures. These results are inconsistent with previous work on the same topic that hypothesized the association of both parameters. Some tentative explanations for these conflicting results are given.