Development of new assessment tools for attentional and executive functioning in children

in Books of Conference Abstract: The 8th European Conference on Psychological Assessment, (2005)

In developmental neuropsychology, attentional and executive impairments are commonly reported following acquired neurological/developmental disorders such as Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), epilepsy, ADHD… ... [more ▼]

In developmental neuropsychology, attentional and executive impairments are commonly reported following acquired neurological/developmental disorders such as Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), epilepsy, ADHD… Unfortunately, most of attentional tests used in child neuropsychology were originally developed for adults and are of limited interest for children (notably because of their lack of attractiveness or because they require some non-developed skills). From a cognitive perspective, it is therefore often difficult to interpret the results obtained with such tools in children. The aim of this study was to develop assessment tasks of attentional/executive functioning which are more attractive (by using colored/familiar stimuli) and more theoretically relevant for young children. The tasks are based on Posner’s attentional model, which includes selective and sustained attention, attentional shifting and cognitive inhibition. Eighty children aged from 5 to 11 with no developmental/neurological deficits were administered tasks assessing visual selective attention (selecting a specific character among distractors), sustained attention (crossing dinosaurs in 5 minutes), flexibility (shifting between name and colour of stimuli), and inhibition (naming the real colour of a red banana or a yellow strawberry). Results confirmed the interest of these tasks in the assessment of attentional functioning in children, thanks to both their limited duration of administration and the stimuli’s attractiveness. Furthermore, results showed that tasks are sensitive to attentional development from 5 to 11 years old (p < .05). Finally, a preliminary study showed that some tasks can be particularly sensitive to attentional disorders in a clinical population of TBI children. [less ▲]

Evaluation des traumatismes crâniens légers dans le cadre de l'expertise médico-légale

in Meulemans, Thierry (Ed.) Neuropsychologie des traumatismes crâniens légers (2004)

Les séquelles des traumatismes crâniens légers : problèmes méthodologiques

in Meulemans, Thierry (Ed.) Neuropsychologie des traumatismes crâniens légers (2004)

Profil neuropsychologique chez des enfants présentant un trouble d’attention avec hyperactivité

Poster (2004)

Le trouble d’attention avec hyperactivité (ou ADHD-Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder) se caractérise par [1] un déficit d’attention, [2] une agitation motrice et [3] une impulsivité motrice. Ce ... [more ▼]

Le trouble d’attention avec hyperactivité (ou ADHD-Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder) se caractérise par [1] un déficit d’attention, [2] une agitation motrice et [3] une impulsivité motrice. Ce trouble présente une prévalence estimée aux environs de 3 à 8% de la population prépubère, avec une nette prédominance masculine. Les conséquences de ce trouble sont importantes et multiples : échec scolaire, difficultés d’apprentissages, mauvaise intégration sociale, … L’hypothèse quant à une étiologie organique de ce trouble trouve un appui considérable dans les études en neuro-imagerie qui ont montré une hypo-activité au niveau des régions frontales, du striatum et d’une partie du système dopaminergique. Les études neuropsychologiques vont également dans ce sens en montrant une similarité entre les profils cognitifs de ces enfants et de patients frontaux. Toutefois, malgré une meilleure compréhension du trouble, le diagnostic d’ADHD reste encore difficile et repose le plus souvent sur le recueil de données subjectives (entretien avec les parents, …). Le but de notre étude est d’une part d’objectiver les déficits attentionnels et exécutifs chez des enfants ADHD de 6 à 12 ans, et d’autre part d’identifier les épreuves neuropsychologiques les plus sensibles aux troubles présentés par ces enfants. Nous avons administré à 17 enfants ADHD et 17 enfants de contrôle (appariés sur base de l’âge et du sexe) des tâches [i] attentionnelles (attention soutenue, sélective et divisée) de la TEA et [ii] exécutives (inhibition évaluée par le test de Stroop, de la Statue [NEPSY] et Go/No Go [TEA] ; test de flexibilité cognitive [TEA] et épreuve de planification [NEPSY]). Les analyses de comparaison de moyennes montrent qu’au niveau attentionnel, les enfants ADHD présentent des troubles d’attention sélective visuelle et auditive (p<.05) ainsi que de l’attention soutenue (p<.05). Au niveau exécutif, on constate des difficultés de flexibilité cognitive et d’inhibition (p<0.01). Une analyse discriminante (par régression logistique) a également été réalisée afin de déterminer la sensibilité/spécificité de ces épreuves dans le diagnostic de l’ADHD. Les analyses permettent de montrer que c’est l’association de deux mesures d’inhibition (test de Statue et Go/No Go) qui permet d’avoir la meilleure sensibilité/spécificité (respectivement de 80% et 87,5%). Ces résultats préliminaires soulignent la contribution importante que peuvent apporter les tests neuropsychologiques dans le diagnostic de l’ADHD. Plus spécifiquement, ils permettent de préciser la nature des déficits attentionnels et exécutifs chez les enfants ADHD : troubles de l’attention soutenue et de l’attention sélective d’une part, et troubles de l’inhibition et de la flexibilité cognitive d’autre part. [less ▲]

Neuropsychologie des fonctions exécutives

Book published by Solal (2004)

Implicit learning of complex information in amnesia

in Brain & Cognition (2003), 52(2), 250-257

Implicit learning abilities of nine amnesic patients were explored by using an artificial grammar learning task in which the test strings were constructed in such a way that grammaticality judgments could ... [more ▼]

Implicit learning abilities of nine amnesic patients were explored by using an artificial grammar learning task in which the test strings were constructed in such a way that grammaticality judgments could not be based on a simple knowledge of bigrams and trigrams (chunks). Results show that amnesic patients and controls performed at the same level during the classification task, whereas amnesic patients performed worse than controls in an explicit generation task. Moreover, there was no correlation between the implicit and explicit measures. These results are compatible with the existence of two kinds of representation intervening in artificial grammar learning. The first one based on processes leading to fragment-specific knowledge (the chunks, which can be accessed explicitly), and the second based on the learning of simple associations and more complex conditional relations between elements. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved. [less ▲]

Emotional Processing in Down Syndrome

in Books of Abstracts: 13th conference of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology (2003)

In addition to mental retardation, Down Syndrome (DS) children present emotional deficits. Some authors have suggested that the emotional deficits observed in DS can be related to developmental changes ... [more ▼]

In addition to mental retardation, Down Syndrome (DS) children present emotional deficits. Some authors have suggested that the emotional deficits observed in DS can be related to developmental changes. However, the link between emotion and cognitive processing remains unclear.This study aims to assess the relationships between emotional and cognitive processing in DS children. More specifically, we wanted to assess whether cognitive development could predict emotional deficits. Eighteen children DS and 18 chronological age-matched (CA) children were presented with emotional tasks designed to tap their abilities (i) to label emotion through emotional faces and prosody, (ii) to attribute, from stories, cognitive and emotional states to characters and (iii) to process face identity and gaze behaviour. Cognitive functioning was assessed including attentional treatment, visuo-spatial working memory, receptive language and logical reasoning. The results confirmed that DS performed worse on both cognitive and emotional tasks than CA children. There are also strong correlations between cognitive (including language and logical reasoning measures) and emotional measures. These results suggest that emotional troubles in DS are related to their global cognitive development; they also suggest that the degree of mental retardation can predict the importance of emotional deficits in DS. [less ▲]

Introduction

in Meulemans, Thierry (Ed.) Evaluation et prise en charge des troubles mnésiques (2003)

A cognitive neuropsychological approach to Alzheimer's disease

in Mulligan, Reinhild; Van der Linden, Martial; Juillerat, Anne-Claude (Eds.) Clinical management of Alzheimer's disease (2003)

Errorless learning: A method to help amnesic patients learn new information

in Journal of Cognitive Rehabilitation (2002), 20