Challenges and strengths, thinking about ´street children´

The term ‘street children’ is often used as an umbrella category for street-connected children and youth. In this post, Graham Pluck discusses research approaches to street children, from those documenting their dire situation to those advocating their resourcefulness. However, if researchers are to effectively tackle street children’s problems, facile distinctions should be avoided by acknowledging both their strengths and weaknesses, he writes

Cognitive Abilities of \u27Street Children\u27: A systematic Review

Although relatively rare in industrialised and developed countries, the phenomenon of young people spending much of their time in urban environments in the context of extreme poverty is common in the cities of the developing world. Interventions are generally focused on bringing the children into education systems. However, the children have often been exposed to a range of factors likely to impair cognitive development, such as trauma and substance abuse, potentially limiting the efficacy of education programmes. A systematic review was performed of studies reporting cognitive function data of street children in developing countries. Only seven studies were found, which reported on 215 individuals. A review of the studies revealed a pattern of below normal general intellectual function and neuropsychological impairments. In those studies where measures of general intellectual functioning were reported, e.g. IQ, comparisons of effect sizes were made. This revealed that cognitive impairment appeared to be relatively minor in samples from Indonesia and South Africa but somewhat larger in samples from Ethiopia and Colombia. The results suggest cross-cultural variation in the effects of street living on cognitive development. However, in general, there is a pattern of lower than normal cognitive performance which is comparable to that observed in studies of homeless children in the USA

Peginterferon Alfa-2a, Lamivudine, and the Combination for HBeAg-Positive Chronic Hepatitis B

Background: Current treatments for chronic hepatitis B are suboptimal. In the search for improved therapies, we compared the efficacy and safety of pegylated interferon alfa plus lamivudine, pegylated interferon alfa without lamivudine, and lamivudine alone for the treatment of hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg)–positive chronic hepatitis B. Methods: A total of 814 patients with HBeAg-positive chronic hepatitis B received either peginterferon alfa-2a (180 µg once weekly) plus oral placebo, peginterferon alfa-2a plus lamivudine (100 mg daily), or lamivudine alone. The majority of patients in the study were Asian (87 percent). Most patients were infected with hepatitis B virus (HBV) genotype B or C. Patients were treated for 48 weeks and followed for an additional 24 weeks. Results: After 24 weeks of follow-up, significantly more patients who received peginterferon alfa-2a monotherapy or peginterferon alfa-2a plus lamivudine than those who received lamivudine monotherapy had HBeAg seroconversion (32 percent vs. 19 percent [

Cognitive Ability, Reward Processing and Personality Associated with Different Aspects of Smartphone Use

Smartphone use has become ubiquitous. Keeping smartphones close and always on, with alerts for new messages, etc., means that users experience unprecedented levels of distracting and reinforcing stimulation, with wide-ranging psychological implications. We interviewed 121 students to record aspects of smartphone use, personality, psychological distress (depression/anxiety), cognitive, social-cognitive, and reward processing. We found that questionnaire-measured problematic phone use is linked to poorer academic performance and to higher psychological distress, neuroticism, psychometric impulsivity and image management. Social media use is linked to neuroticism. Keeping a smartphone in hand and frequent checking is associated with extraversion and poorer performance on tests of sustained attention and general intelligence, particularly semantic reasoning. The number of messenger services used is associated with sensitivity to financial rewards and responses to social reinforcement in an instrumental/operant conditioning task. However, the later result links messenger use to resistance to reinforcement, implying a goal-directed association driven by demand characteristics. Overall, the current results, and review of extant literature, suggest that there are generally negative impacts of smartphone use on psychological health, including cognitive function. Furthermore, variation in responses to reward and reinforcement is an important individual differences factor linked particularly to social communication with instant messaging services

A lexical decision task to measure crystallized-verbal ability in Spanish

Abstract A classical distinction in cognitive science is between fluid and crystalized abilities. Fluid ability is captured by many common executive function and intelligence tests. Crystalized ability, on the other hand, can be measured quite simply via lexical decision tasks including the English-language Spot-the-Word Test. However, no similar Spanish-language test has been available up to now. This paper presents a Spanish-language Lexical Decision Task that is quick to administer and was tested on sample of 139 normal adult participants. Results indicate that the new test has good internal consistency and test-retest reliability. An analysis of the correlations between this new test and demographic variables, as well as with the subtests of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale suggest that it is a valid measure of crystalized-verbal ability. It also appears to be a brief but valid assessment of intelligence in general, and its positive correlation with academic achievement establishes predictive validity. The new test has the potential to be a useful research tool to rapidly measure reading ability, crystalized-verbal ability, and intelligence in Spanish speaking adults.Resumen Una distinción clásica en la ciencia cognitiva es entre las habilidades fluidas y cristalizadas. La habilidad fluida es medida por muchas funcionas ejecutivas y tests de inteligencia. Por otro lado, la habilidad cristalizada puede ser medida sencillamente mediante una tarea de decisión léxica, como en la versión en inglés conocida como Spot-the-Word Test. Sin embargo, hasta ahora no ha habido una versión similar de este test en español. Aquí les presento una Tarea de Decisión Léxica en español que es de rápida aplicación. Esta fue aplicada en una muestra de 139 participantes, adultos normales. Los resultados indican que este nuevo test tiene buena consistencia interna y confiabilidad test-retest. Los análisis de las correlaciones entre este nuevo test y las variables demográficas, al igual que con las sub pruebas de las Escala de Inteligencia de Wechsler para Adultos, sugiere que es una medida confiable de la habilidad verbal cristalizada. También parece ser una breve, pero válida evaluación de inteligencia en general, con validez predictiva establecida por sus correlaciones positivas con el logro académico. Este nuevo test tiene potencial para ser una herramienta útil para medir rápidamente habilidad de lectura, habilidad verbal cristalizada e inteligencia en adultos hispanohablantes

Theory of Mind Ability and Socioeconomic Status, a Study of Street-Connected Children and Adolescents in Ecuador

Family socioeconomic status (SES) is closely associated with cognitive ability in children and adolescents. However, most of the research has come from high-income countries. There is only limited research on ‘street children’, who represent an aspect of low-SES particularly associated with low- and middle-income counties. The current research in Quito, Ecuador, compared a group of street-connected youth with a not street-connected control group on two different measures of theory of mind ability and verbal comprehension. Initial analysis revealed that the street-connected sample scored significantly below the level of the control sample for verbal comprehension. For the main analysis, street-connected youth were matched to control participants for age, sex, and verbal comprehension scores. The street-connected sample was found to perform significantly below the control sample on both measures of theory of mind. Furthermore, worse performance appeared to be linked to severity of symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) within the street-connected sample. In conclusion, the association of relatively poor verbal comprehension with street-connectedness is consistent with existing research from high-income countries on SES gradients and cognitive development. In contrast, theory of mind ability, a core aspect of social cognition, may be particularly linked to the street-connectedness form of low SES that exists in many low- and middle-income countries

Differential associations of neurobehavioral traits and cognitive ability to academic achievement in higher education

Background People vary between each other on several neurobehavioral traits, which may have implications for understanding academic achievement. Methods University-level Psychology or Engineering students were assessed for neurobehavioral traits, intelligence, and current psychological distress. Scores were compared with their grade point average (GPA) data. Results Factors associated with higher GPA differed markedly between groups. For Engineers, intelligence, but not neurobehavioral traits or psychological distress, was a strong correlate of grades. For Psychologists, grades were not correlated with intelligence but they were with the neurobehavioral traits of executive dysfunction, disinhibition, apathy, and positive schizotypy. However, only the latter two were associated independently of psychological distress. Additionally, higher mixed-handedness was associated with higher GPA in the combined sample. Conclusions Neurological factors (i.e., neurobehavioral traits and intelligence), are differentially associated with university-level grades, depending on the major studied. However, mixed-handedness may prove to be a better general predictor of academic performance across disciplines

ABO Blood Group, Socioeconomic Status, and Cognitive Function: Evidence for Better Visual Recognition Associated with the Type O Phenotype

Background: The ABO blood group system is associated with neurological health and cognitive impairment, and also with structural differences in the healthy human brain. The current research aimed to examine how blood group may be associated with neuropsychological functions in non-clinical participants. Method: Participants were 132 students at two universities in Ecuador. All were assessed for blood group and a range of cognitive abilities with known neurological substrates: shape recognition (‘ventral visual route’), spatial vision (‘dorsal visual route’), language (left perisylvian), focused attention (right perisylvian), executive function (dorsal prefrontal), advantageous decision making (ventral prefrontal) and declarative (medial temporal) and procedural (basal ganglia) learning. Socioeconomic status (SES) was assessed as a potential confounding variable. Results: ABO blood type frequencies showed a cline, varying by site of data collection, and Type O blood was more common in participants from lower SES backgrounds. Additionally, higher SES was associated with better cognitive performance, significantly so for language, executive function and memory processes. With SES and data-collection site covaried, precategorical visual shape recognition was observed to be the only skill significantly associated with blood group, being better in participants with the Type O phenotype. This result was present in two different samples and was significant with or without the use of covariates. Conclusions: Human blood group classification is linked to variability in cognitive function, specifically, shape recognition performance associated with occipito-temporal processing. This may have implications for understanding variation in neurological and cognitive health, as well as cognitive abilities as individual differences

Estimation of premorbid intelligence and executive cognitive functions with lexical reading tasks

Introduction: Estimation of premorbid function is essential to accurate assessment of cognitive impairments in clinical neuropsychology and behavioral neurology, and has numerous research applications. However, current methods are rudimentary and imperfect. We explored how lexical tasks can be best used to accurately and precisely estimate intelligence and executive functions. Methods: We studied lexical word pronunciation, lexical decision, and stem-completion naming in the estimation of cognitive ability, in samples of healthy adults (n = 143), and patients with cognitive impairment due to neurological illness (n =15). Cognitive assessments included intelligence (WAIS-IV), episodic memory, and eight tests of executive functioning, including Theory of Mind. Results: When examined at the group level, single word pronunciation was particularly robust in the presence of cognitive impairment in patients with dementia. However, as a case series, patients showed idiosyncratic patterns of preservation of lexical skills including on tests of pronunciation, lexical decision and stem-completion naming. All of these tasks were highly correlated with IQ scores in a non-clinical sample, suggesting that they could be used as estimators of premorbid intelligence. Simulated impairments in non-clinical controls suggested that the median score from the three different tasks had the highest correlation with, and provided the most accurate and precise estimates of, intelligence, and was also the least sensitive to impairment. Finally, we show that these methods also predict executive functions, in particular, strong correlations were found for proverb interpretation, phonemic/semantic alternating verbal fluency, and working memory span performance. Conclusions: Several lexical tasks are potentially useful in predication of pre-illness cognitive ability in patients with neurological or psychiatric illness. However, due to the heterogeneity of impairments between patients, estimation of premorbid levels could be improved by the use of the median estimated values from multiple tests. This could potentially improve diagnostic accuracy and quantification of neuropsychological impairments