A comparative analysis of children born with low birthweight and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

BACKGROUND: We aimed to compare the profile of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children Fourth Edition (WISC-IV) between Japanese schoolchildren born very preterm (VP) and with very low birthweight (VLBW) and those with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and to identify the specific neurocognitive characteristics of VLBW/VP children. METHODS: The VLBW/VP group in the present study included 50 (19 male, 31 female) first- to third-grade elementary school children born between January 2008 and February 2013 at Osaka Medical and Pharmaceutical University Hospital and Saiseikai Suita Hospital with birthweights <1,500 g and <32 gestational weeks. The ADHD group included 18 (13 male, 5 female) first- to third-grade elementary school children who visited Osaka Medical and Pharmaceutical University Hospital between January 2019 and October 2021. Full-scale intelligence quotient scores, four indices, and 12 subtests of the WISC-IV were calculated for all participants and compared between the VLBW/VP and ADHD groups. We assessed whether the patients' clinical history was associated with a low score on the cancellation task in the VLBW/VP group. RESULTS: The WISC-IV profiles showed similar between-group patterns, and the VLBW/VP group had lower cancellation task scores than the ADHD group. CONCLUSIONS: This is the first study to compare WISC-IV profiles between VLBW/VP children and those with ADHD. Further investigation is needed on the association between academic performance and the score of the cancellation task, and the neural mechanism of low performance for cancellation tasks in VLBW/VP children.

Validity of the Wide-range Assessment of Vision-related Essential Skills in Japanese Children with Learning Problems.

SIGNIFICANCE: Our study revealed that the validity of a new Japanese visual-perceptual test was acceptable. Visual-perceptual abilities are important to activities of daily living; thus, accurate assessment of visual perception is especially important for children with neurodevelopmental disorders and particularly so for those with learning problems. PURPOSE: Visual perception refers to the process by which one receives visual information through sensory impulses and then translates those impulses into meaning based on a previously developed view of the environment. A problem in Japan is the paucity of visual perception tests that use normative data from children who are native Japanese. The Wide-range Assessment of Vision-related Essential Skills (WAVES), which measures visual perception and eye-hand coordination skills and is based on Japanese normative data, was recently published in Japan. The validity of this test has not been comprehensively established. METHODS: To investigate the validity of the WAVES, we used the Pearson correlation coefficient to calculate the degrees of association among WAVES scaled and index scores compared with Developmental Test of Visual Perception, Third Edition, scores from 108 elementary school children with symptoms of learning problems. Participants were recruited at Osaka Medical College Learning Disability Center and Sakai Seikeikai Learning Disability Center. RESULTS: The concurrent validity of the WAVES was supported by moderate correlation (r = 0.67, P < .01) between the total scores for visual perception and eye-hand coordination index from the WAVES and general visual perception index from the Developmental Test of Visual Perception, Third Edition, even though a correlation analysis of subtests found differences between the two tests. CONCLUSIONS: Our results showed that the indices from the two tests measured nearly the same underlying visual-perceptual constructs and indicated that the WAVES had acceptable levels of concurrent validity.

[Development of a vision-related symptom and performance checklist for children].

OBJECTIVE: Visual dysfunctions can cause problems in academic and athletic activities in children with developmental disorders. This research aims to develop a vision-related symptom and performance checklist for children (VSPCL). METHODS: Parents of 115 children with visual dysfunction and 859 typically developed children were recruited to conduct VSPCL. RESULTS: As a result of factor and discrimination analyses, 39 items were selected and divided into four subscales (alpha =.715 approximately alpha =.924). ROC analysis was used to investigate discriminability, revealing high sensitivities (81.3% - 93.5%) and specificities (79.1% - 91.8%) for all subscales. CONCLUSIONS: VSPCL was found to be useful to discriminate symptoms related to visual dysfunctions in children with developmental disorders.

[Development of a training program for Japanese dyslexic children and its short-term efficacy].

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study is to develop a computer training program of reading for the Japanese dyslexic children and to examine its short-term efficacy on their reading and writing abilities. METHODS: Fifteen dyslexic children underwent two sets of training programs, one for single-hiragana and non-word reading, and the other for the reading of real words, in which each hiragana was followed by the correctly read sound. Subjects were required to use a given program for five minutes a day for three weeks, switching to the other program after a three-week interval. Four kinds of reading test and one writing test were done at the beginning and end of each program period. RESULTS: The averages reading speeds increased, and the single-hiragana reading error average was lower after the training. Hiragana-writing errors also decreased, even though no writing procedure was involved in the programs. CONCLUSIONS: The results indicate the usefulness of these training programs as an early intervention of reading and writing for the Japanese dyslexic children.

Effects of sequential and discrete rapid naming on reading in Japanese children with reading difficulty.

To clarify whether rapid naming ability itself is a main underpinning factor of rapid automatized naming tests (RAN) and how deep an influence the discrete decoding process has on reading, we performed discrete naming tasks and discrete hiragana reading tasks as well as sequential naming tasks and sequential hiragana reading tasks with 38 Japanese schoolchildren with reading difficulty. There were high correlations between both discrete and sequential hiragana reading and sentence reading, suggesting that some mechanism which automatizes hiragana reading makes sentence reading fluent. In object and color tasks, there were moderate correlations between sentence reading and sequential naming, and between sequential naming and discrete naming. But no correlation was found between reading tasks and discrete naming tasks. The influence of rapid naming ability of objects and colors upon reading seemed relatively small, and multi-item processing may work in relation to these. In contrast, in the digit naming task there was moderate correlation between sentence reading and discrete naming, while no correlation was seen between sequential naming and discrete naming. There was moderate correlation between reading tasks and sequential digit naming tasks. Digit rapid naming ability has more direct effect on reading while its effect on RAN is relatively limited. The ratio of how rapid naming ability influences RAN and reading seems to vary according to kind of the stimuli used. An assumption about components in RAN which influence reading is discussed in the context of both sequential processing and discrete naming speed.

[Saccadic eye movements in children with reading disorders].

Several reports raised the possibility that dysfunction of saccadic eye movements produces reading disorder (RD), although opposite conclusions have also been reported. In this study, saccadic eye movements were investigated in 13 forth graders with RD and 20 age-matched controls during reading and non-reading tasks. Compared to the control group, children with RD showed significantly higher incidences of both forward and backward saccadic eye movements in reading tasks, while they revealed a significantly lower number of saccadic eye movements in response to sequentially moving targets in two types of non-reading tasks. These problems, seen in non-reading tasks, suggest that excessive saccadic eye movements observed in RD children during reading are not produced by mechanisms involved in the language and phonological processes alone, but also those in the saccadic eye movement process. Dysfunction in the saccadic eye movements could be one of the causal factors that produce RD.