Sustained attention and inhibitory control in children with sickle cell syndrome.

Comparing sustained attention and inhibitory control among youth with sickle cell syndrome (SCS) and nondiseased sibling controls, this study found significant differences in multiple components of attention and inhibitory control as a function of chronological age. Older SCS youth were found to have increased attention and reflectivity. Although it has been argued that SCS youth without overt neurological impairments might evidence microvascular infarction, the present study, which employed commonly utilized neurocognitive and behavioral measures, does not lend support to the notion of generalized deficits in the absence of specific laboratory findings. Disease parameters including hemoglobin levels, days hospitalized, and emergency room visits were not significantly correlated with performance on any of the measures. Within the limitations of this particular study, results were interpreted to refute the notion of disease-related neurocognitive impairments for SCS youth. Further, the development of attentional skills for SCS youth is suggested to proceed similarly to that of normally developing youth.

The development of decoding of emotions in children with externalizing behavioral disturbances and their normally developing peers.

This investigation examined children's capacity to decode verbal and nonverbal emotional stimuli. Children with externalizing behavioral symptoms were compared to two types of controls, including chronically ill and normally developing children. Children were requested to identify whether video scenes were happy, angry, sad, or neutral, across four different modalities including verbal, prosody, facial, and combined. Findings were that chronological age was a significant predictor of children's ability to decode emotions with older children having better developed abilities than their younger peers. Verbal intelligence also was found to be a significant predictor of the ability to decode facial expressions and combined scenes. Although the data did not support the original hypotheses that children with externalizing behavior disorders would be less accurate than controls in the decoding of emotions, findings did support a developmental progression of decoding accuracy. Recommendations within the limitations of the study design are provided which support a developmental framework in children's acquisition of the decoding of emotions.