The typical and atypical developing mind: a common model.

We present a theory of atypical development based on a developmental theory of the typical mind integrating developmental, cognitive, and psychometric theory and research. The paper comprises three parts. First, it outlines the theory of typical development. The theory postulates central cognitive mechanisms, such as relational integration, executive and inferential processes, and domain-specific processes underlying different environmental relations, such as visuospatial or quantitative relations. Cognitive development advances in cycles satisfying developmental priorities in mastering these systems, such as executive control from 2-6 years, inferential control from 7-11 years, and truth control from 12-18 years. Second, we discuss atypical development, showing how each neurodevelopmental disorder emerges from deficiencies in one or more of the processes comprising the architecture of the mind. Deficiencies in relational integration mechanisms, together with deficiencies in social understanding, yield autism spectrum disorder. Deficiencies in executive processes yield attention-deficit and hyperactivity disorder. Deficiencies in symbolic representation yield specialized learning difficulties, such as dyslexia and dyscalculia. Finally, we discuss clinical and educational implications, suggesting the importance of early diagnosis of malfunctioning in each of these dimensions and specific programs for their remediation.

Cognitive and personality predictors of school performance from preschool to secondary school: An overarching model.

In this article, existing research investigating how school performance relates to cognitive, self-awareness, language, and personality processes is reviewed. We outline the architecture of the mind, involving a general factor, g, that underlies distinct mental processes (i.e., executive, reasoning, language, cognizance, and personality processes). From preschool to adolescence, g shifts from executive to reasoning and cognizance processes; personality also changes, consolidating in adolescence. There are three major trends in the existing literature: (a) All processes are highly predictive of school achievement if measured alone, each accounting for ∼20% of its variance; (b) when measured together, cognitive processes (executive functions and representational awareness in preschool and fluid intelligence after late primary school) dominate as predictors (over ∼50%), drastically absorbing self-concepts and personality dispositions that drop to ∼3%-5%; and (c) predictive power changes according to the processes forming g at successive levels: attention control and representational awareness in preschool (∼85%); fluid intelligence, language, and working memory in primary school (∼53%); fluid intelligence, language, self-evaluation, and school-specific self-concepts in secondary school (∼70%). Stability and plasticity of personality emerge as predictors in secondary school. A theory of educational priorities is proposed, arguing that (a) executive and awareness processes; (b) information management; and (c) reasoning, self-evaluation, and flexibility in knowledge building must dominate in preschool, primary, and secondary school, respectively. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Changing priorities in the development of cognitive competence and school learning: A general theory.

This paper summarizes a theory of cognitive development and elaborates on its educational implications. The theory postulates that development occurs in cycles along multiple fronts. Cognitive competence in each cycle comprises a different profile of executive, inferential, and awareness processes, reflecting changes in developmental priorities in each cycle. Changes reflect varying needs in representing, understanding, and interacting with the world. Interaction control dominates episodic representation in infancy; attention control and perceptual awareness dominate in realistic representations in preschool; inferential control and awareness dominate rule-based representation in primary school; truth and validity control and precise self-evaluation dominate in principle-based thought in adolescence. We demonstrate that the best predictors of school learning in each cycle are the cycle's cognitive priorities. Also learning in different domains, e.g., language and mathematics, depends on an interaction between the general cognitive processes dominating in each cycle and the state of the representational systems associated with each domain. When a representational system is deficient, specific learning difficulties may emerge, e.g., dyslexia and dyscalculia. We also discuss the educational implications for evaluation and learning at school.

Exercise and Occupational Stress among Firefighters.

The aim of our study was to evaluate the potential association between physical activity and occupational stress among firefighters. Data were collected from Cypriot firefighters through a web-based battery of internationally validated questionnaires completed anonymously (COPSOQ, DASS). A total of 430 firefighters (response rate 68%) completed the survey (age range: 21-60 years). More than half of the firefighters (54%) reported either no or minimal physical activity. A total of 11% of firefighters reported moderate to extremely severe stress based on the DASS-S scale. Using multivariable-adjusted logistic regression models, we showed that firefighters who exercised had 50% lower risk of occupational stress, and using a categorical model, we found that every hour per week of increased physical activity among firefighters was associated with 16% lower risk of occupational stress after adjusting for age, education, smoking, and body mass index (OR = 1.16; p = 0.05). In addition, our findings suggest an inverse dose-response relationship between physical activity and occupational stress among firefighters. Physical activity appears to be inversely associated with occupational stress and serves as an important mitigating factor of occupational stress in firefighters. Further research is warranted to evaluate the potential effect of exercise interventions on occupational stress, and the overall mental health of firefighters and other occupational groups.

Developmental Language Disorder and Autism: Commonalities and Differences on Language.

Language and communication deficits characterize both autism spectrum disorder and developmental language disorder, and the possibility of there being a common profile of these is a matter of tireless debate in the research community. This experimental study addresses the relation of these two developmental conditions in the critical topic of language. Α total of 103 children (79 males, 24 females) participated in the present study. Specifically, the study's sample consisted of 40 children with autism, 28 children with developmental language disorder, and 35 typically developing children between 6 and 12 years old. All children completed language and cognitive measures. The results showed that there is a subgroup inside the autism group of children who demonstrate language difficulties similar to children with developmental language disorder. Specifically, two different subgroups were derived from the autism group; those with language impairment and those without. Both autism and language-impaired groups scored lower than typically developing children on all language measures indicating a common pathology in language ability. The results of this study shed light on the relation between the two disorders, supporting the assumption of a subgroup with language impairment inside the autism spectrum disorder population. The common picture presented by the two developmental conditions highlights the need for further research in the field.

Mapping Mind-Brain Development: Towards a Comprehensive Theory.

The relations between the developing mind and developing brain are explored. We outline a theory of intellectual development postulating that the mind comprises four systems of processes (domain-specific, attention and working memory, reasoning, and cognizance) developing in four cycles (episodic, realistic, rule-based, and principle-based representations, emerging at birth, 2, 6, and 11 years, respectively), with two phases in each. Changes in reasoning relate to processing efficiency in the first phase and working memory in the second phase. Awareness of mental processes is recycled with the changes in each cycle and drives their integration into the representational unit of the next cycle. Brain research shows that each type of processes is served by specialized brain networks. Domain-specific processes are rooted in sensory cortices; working memory processes are mainly rooted in hippocampal, parietal, and prefrontal cortices; abstraction and alignment processes are rooted in parietal, frontal, and prefrontal and medial cortices. Information entering these networks is available to awareness processes. Brain networks change along the four cycles, in precision, connectivity, and brain rhythms. Principles of mind-brain interaction are discussed.

Occupational stress and musculoskeletal symptoms in firefighters.

OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to evaluate the potential association between occupational stress and musculoskeletal symptoms in firefighters. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Data were collected among Cypriot firefighters through a battery of adapted questionnaires completed anonymously. RESULTS: A total of 430 firefighters (a response rate of 68%) completed the survey (the age range: 21-60 years). A total of 11% of firefighters reported moderate to extremely severe stress through the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire and Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale. A total of 40% of firefighters reported musculoskeletal symptoms, the most frequent being back pain. Multivariable-adjusted logistic regression models showed that occupational stress was associated with a 50% higher risk of musculoskeletal symptoms in firefighters after adjusting for age, smoking and obesity (OR = 1.52, p = 0.04). In addition, a positive dose-response relationship was found between occupational stress and musculoskeletal symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: Occupational stress constitutes a significant risk for firefighters and is associated with higher prevalence of musculoskeletal symptoms at work. Int J Occup Med Environ Health. 2019;32(3):341-52.

Specific Language Impairment and Reading Disability: Categorical Distinction or Continuum?

Specific language impairment (SLI) and reading disability (RD) are familial, moderately heritable comorbid developmental disorders. The key deficit of SLI is oral language, whereas children with RD exhibit impairment in learning to read. The present study examines the possible co-occurrence of RD and SLI and the nature of this co-occurrence at a linguistic and a cognitive level in an orthographically consistent language. Four groups of children participated in the study: an RD group ( n = 10), an SLI group ( n = 13), a possible comorbid group ( n = 9), and a control-no deficit group ( n = 20). Analysis showed that all three clinical groups in our sample performed similarly in phonological awareness and naming-speed tasks. However, significant group differences were observed in orthographic processing, reading, semantics, and phonological memory measures, thus supporting the view that SLI and RD are distinct disorders. Results are in line with previous findings indicating that SLI and RD share common characteristics, although the two conditions are manifested with different symptoms.

English as a foreign language teacher training needs and perceived preparedness to include dyslexic learners: The case of Greece, Cyprus, and Poland.

This study examines the effect of demographic variables on the beliefs of teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) about their preparedness to include dyslexic learners in mainstream classrooms in Greece, Cyprus, and Poland and identifies their professional development needs. Statistically significant multivariate analysis effects were obtained for country, training, teaching experience with dyslexic learners, and school type. Unlike overall teaching experience and completed level of education (degree), the type of teaching experience with dyslexic EFL learners (direct contact and personal involvement in teaching) seems to shape the perception of teacher preparedness to successfully include these learners. Other interesting tendencies were identified such as between-country differences concerning sources of prior professional knowledge on EFL and dyslexia as well as preferences for particular modes of training. The paper highlights the demand for professional training on EFL and dyslexia as this was confirmed across the three countries.

The developmental trinity of mind: Cognizance, executive control, and reasoning.

This paper summarizes research on how cognizance, that is, awareness of mental processes, interacts with executive control and reasoning from childhood to adolescence. Central positions are that (a) cognizance changes extensively with age; (b) it contributes to the formation of executive control, and (c) mediates between executive control and reasoning. Cognizance recycles with changes in executive and inferential possibilities in four developmental cycles: it registers their present state, yielding insight into their operation, allowing their better management; this catalyzes their transformation into the next level. Implications for theory of intellectual development and practical implications for education are discussed. This article is categorized under: Psychology > Development and Aging Neuroscience > Cognition Neuroscience > Development Philosophy > Consciousness.

Mind-Personality Relations from Childhood to Early Adulthood.

We present three studies which investigated the relations between cognition and personality from 7 to 20 years of age. All three studies showed that general cognitive ability and the general factor of personality are significantly related throughout this age span. This relation was expressed in several ways across studies. The first investigated developmental relations between three reasoning domains (inductive, deductive, and scientific) and Eysenck's four personality dimensions in a longitudinal-sequential design where 260 participants received the cognitive tests three times, and the personality test two times, covering the span from 9 to 16 years. It was found that initial social likeability significantly shapes developmental momentum in cognition and vice versa, especially in the 9- to 11-year period. The second study involved 438 participants from 7 to 17 years, tested twice on attention control, working memory, reasoning in different domains, and once by a Big Five Factors inventory. Extending the findings of the first, this study showed that progression in reasoning is affected negatively by conscientiousness and positively by openness, on top of attention control and working memory influences. The third study tested the relations between reasoning in several domains, the ability to evaluate one's own cognitive performance, self-representation about the reasoning, the Big Five, and several aspects of emotional intelligence, from 9 to 20 years of age (N = 247). Network, hierarchical network, and structural equation modeling showed that cognition and personality are mediated by the ability of self-knowing. Emotional intelligence was not an autonomous dimension. All dimensions except emotional intelligence influenced academic performance. A developmental model for mind-personality relations is proposed.

gP for What is Common between Developing Intelligence and Personality: Response to the Commentators.

Three are the main postulates of our article under discussion: First, both human intelligence and personality are hierarchically organized, with a general factor at the apex of each hierarchy, i. [...].

Developmental Differentiation and Binding of Mental Processes with g through the Life-Span.

Integration/differentiation of mental processes is major mechanism of development. Developmental theories ascribe intellectual development to it. In psychometric theory, Spearman's law of diminishing returns postulates that increasing g allows increasing differentiation of cognitive abilities, because increased mental power allows variable investment in domain-specific learning. Empirical evidence has been inconsistent so far, with some studies supporting and others contradicting this mechanism. This state of affairs is due to a developmental phenomenon: Both differentiation and strengthening of relations between specific processes and g may happen but these changes are phase-specific and ability-specific, depending upon the developmental priorities in the formation of g in each phase. We present eight studies covering the age span from 4 to 85 years in support of this phenomenon. Using new powerful modeling methods we showed that differentiation and binding of mental processes in g occurs in cycles. Specific processes intertwine with g at the beginning of cycles when they are integrated into it; when well established, these processes may vary with increasing g, reflecting its higher flexibility. Representational knowledge, inductive inference and awareness of it, and grasp of logical constraints framing inference are the major markers of g, first intertwining with in their respective cycles and differentiating later during the periods of 2-6, 7-11, and 11-20 years, respectively. The implications of these findings for an overarching cognitive developmental/differential theory of human mind are discussed.

From Cognitive Development to Intelligence: Translating Developmental Mental Milestones into Intellect.

This special issue aimed to contribute to the unification of two disciplines focusing on cognition and intelligence: the psychology of cognitive development and the psychology of intelligence. The general principles of the organization and development of human intelligence are discussed first. Each paper is then summarized and discussed vis-à-vis these general principles. The implications for major theories of cognitive development and intelligence are briefly discussed.

How Is RAN Related to Reading Fluency? A Comprehensive Examination of the Prominent Theoretical Accounts.

We examined the prominent theoretical explanations of the RAN-reading relationship in a relatively transparent language (Greek) in a sample of children (n = 286) followed from Grade 1 to Grade 2. Specifically, we tested the fit of eight different models, as defined by the type of reading performance predicted (oral vs. silent word reading fluency), the type of RAN tasks (non-alphanumeric vs. alphanumeric), and the RAN effects (direct vs. indirect). Working memory, attention, processing speed, and motor skills were used as "common cause" variables predicting both RAN and reading fluency and phonological awareness and orthographic processing were used as mediators of RAN's effects on reading fluency. The findings of both concurrent and longitudinal analyses indicated that RAN is a unique predictor of oral reading fluency, but not silent reading fluency. Using alphanumeric or non-alphanumeric RAN did not particularly affect the RAN-reading relationship. Both phonological awareness and orthographic processing partly mediated RAN's effects on reading fluency. Theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.

Coping With Logical Fallacies: A Developmental Training Program for Learning to Reason.

This study trained children to master logical fallacies and examined how learning is related to processing efficiency and fluid intelligence (gf). A total of one hundred and eighty 8- and 11-year-old children living in Cyprus were allocated to a control, a limited (LI), and a full instruction (FI) group. The LI group learned the notion of logical contradiction and the logical structure of the schemes involved. The FI group learned, additionally, to recognize other deductive reasoning principles. Reasoning improved proportionally to training. Awareness improved equally in LI and FI. Changes in reasoning and awareness changes were related to attention control and gf. Awareness mediated the influence of training on reasoning but not vice versa, suggesting that awareness is necessary for conditional reasoning. Implications are discussed.

Theory of mind and specific language impairment in school-age children.

Research on the relationship between aspects of language development and Theory of Mind (ToM) in children with language impairments suggests that children with language impairment show a delay in ToM development. This study aimed to examine the relationships of the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic skills with ToM in school-age children. Twenty children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) aged 9-12 years and two control groups, one matched for chronological age (CA) and one for language ability (LA) (aged 8-10 years) were compared on a set of language tasks tapping syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic skills and on an advanced test of ToM. Results showed that children with SLI performed poorly on the ToM task compared to the CA matches. Also, analysis showed that language skills and ToM are related and that syntactic and pragmatic abilities contributed significantly to the prediction of ToM performance in the SLI group. It is concluded that the syntax/pragmatic aspects of the language impact on ToM understanding in children with SLI.

Embedding cognizance in intellectual development.

This study examined whether cognizance of cognitive processes (i.e., awareness of the perceptual and inferential origins of knowledge) mediates between basic processing efficiency functions (i.e., processing speed, attention control, and working memory) and fluid cognition (e.g., performance on Raven-like matrices) during development. For this aim, children from 4 to 8 years of age were examined by various measures addressed to each of these processes. All processes developed systematically throughout this age period. Structural equation modeling showed that awareness does have this mediating role, that this mediation is phase specific based on perceptual awareness and theory of mind during the 5- and 6-year phase and on inferential awareness during the 7- and 8-year phase, and that it builds up within each developmental cycle. Attention control emerges from, rather than directs, working memory and largely remains beyond awareness through the age span studied. Implications for theory of intellectual development are discussed.

Early language delay phenotypes and correlation with later linguistic abilities.

OBJECTIVES: The present study focused on examining the continuity and directionality of language skills in late talkers (LTs) and identifying factors which might contribute to language outcomes at the age of 3 years. METHODS: Subjects were 23 Cypriot-Greek-speaking toddlers classified as LTs and 24 age-matched typically developing peers (TDs). Participants were assessed at 28, 32 and 36 months, using various linguistic measures such as size of receptive and expressive vocabulary, mean length of utterance (MLU) of words and number of consonants produced. Data on otitis media familial history were also analyzed. RESULTS: The ANOVA results indicated parallel developmental profiles between the two groups, with a language lag characterizing LTs. Concurrent correlations between measures showed that poor phonetic inventories in the LT group at 28 months predicted poor MLU at the ages of 32 and 36 months. Significant cross-lagged correlations supported the finding that poor phonetic inventories at 28 months served as a good predictor for MLU and expressive vocabulary at the age of 32 and for MLU at 36 months. CONCLUSIONS: The results highlight the negative effect of early language delay on language skills up to the age of 3 years and lend support to the current literature regarding the universal linguistic picture of early and persistent language delay. Based on the current results, poor phonetic inventories at the age of intake might serve as a predictive factor for language outcomes at the age of 36 months. Finally, the findings are discussed in view of the need for further research with a focus on more language-sensitive tools in testing later language outcomes.

Toddlers with delayed expressive language: an overview of the characteristics, risk factors and language outcomes.

"Late talkers" is a term used in the scientific field of atypical language development to describe toddlers who exhibit delay in expressive language skills, although they do have intact receptive skills. This article provides an overview of the literature on late talking toddlers. Specifically, it underscores the risk factors for late talking as well as the parenting and individual characteristics of this group of children. It also presents the association between expressive language delay and the behavioral and socio-emotional development of late talkers, and the language outcomes of late talking toddlers at a later point in development. Our review culminates with recommendations and intervention guidelines for clinicians.