Clinical utility of the WASI-II and its association with acculturation levels among Arab American adolescent males.

Neuropsychologists attempting to provide an ethical and clinically useful assessment of intellectual functioning among immigrant youth face great challenges. For instance, immigrant youth undergo an acculturation process that can profoundly affect cognitive development including the reliability and validity of norm-referenced intelligence tests. This study explored the clinical utility of the WASI-II among male adolecent Arab Americans (n = 80). It also explored the association between sociodemographic proxy variables and acculturation rating scale measures with verbal and language-reduced IQ performances. Results showed lower verbal than language-reduced IQs but discrepancies occurred in the context of signficant variability within and between each IQ index. The difference between each IQ index was mostly associated with sociodemographic proxy factors. English language competence was associated with performance on Vocabulary. No acculturation variable was substantially associated with language-reduced IQ after controlling for parent income. Performance on Matrix Reasoning was not influenced by any sociodemographic or acculturation factors. Results showed that proxy acculturation variables were not associated with WASI-II outcomes. Important clinical and research implications, and limitations were outlined.

Verbal and visuospatial working memory as predictors of children's reading ability.

Children with reading difficulties often demonstrate weaknesses in working memory (WM). This research study explored the relation between two WM systems (verbal and visuospatial WM) and reading ability in a sample of school-aged children with a wide range of reading skills. Children (N = 157), ages 9-12, were administered measures of short-term memory, verbal WM, visuospatial WM, and reading measures (e.g., reading fluency and comprehension). Although results indicated that verbal WM was a stronger predictor in reading fluency and comprehension, visuospatial WM also significantly predicted reading skills, but provided more unique variance in reading comprehension than reading fluency. These findings suggest that visuospatial WM may play a significant role in higher level reading processes, particularly in reading comprehension, than previously thought.

Gender differences among children with ADHD on continuous performance tests: a meta-analytic review.

OBJECTIVE: Gender differences among children with ADHD are not well understood. The continuous performance test (CPT) is the most frequently used direct measure of inattention and impulsivity. This meta-analysis compared CPT performance between boys and girls with and without ADHD. METHOD: All peer-reviewed ADHD studies published between 1980 and 2010 that used a CPT and enabled gender comparison were included. Gender differences in commission (impulsivity) and omission (inattention) errors were analyzed. RESULTS: Included studies comprised a sample of 772 boys and 325 girls with ADHD. Findings show that boys were significantly more impulsive than girls, but no difference with inattention was found. Within-gender analysis revealed that the difference among boys with and without ADHD was significantly larger than the difference among girls with and without ADHD. CONCLUSION: The results indicate that gender is a significant moderating factor in the assessment of core ADHD symptoms when using CPTs.