PubMed Health⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

L Abbeduto

Publications and source records attributed to L Abbeduto.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2006

Cognitive, language and social-cognitive skills of individuals with fragile X syndrome with and without autism.

BACKGROUND: It is not known whether those with co-morbid fragile X syndrome (FXS) and autism represent a distinct subtype of FXS; whether the especially severe cognitive delays seen in studies of young children with co-morbid FXS and autism compared with those with only FXS continue into adolescence and young adulthood; and whether autism in those with FXS is 'true autism', i.e. reflects the same underlying problems as idiopathic autism. METHOD: We compared the non-verbal IQ of adolescents and young adults with co-morbid FXS and autism (n = 10) with those with only FXS (n = 44). We then created a subsample of those with FXS only, matched on non-verbal IQ, mental age and gender (n = 21) to the subsample of those with co-morbid FXS and autism. We compared the two groups on measures of expressive language, receptive language (lexical, grammatical morphology and syntactic patterns), and a theory of mind task. RESULTS: Those with co-morbid FXS and autism had lower non-verbal IQs than those with only FXS. The participants with co-morbid FXS and autism did not perform as well as the cognitive ability- and gender-matched participants with only FXS on the three measures of receptive language or the theory of mind task; there were no differences on the expressive language measure. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings support the notion that those with co-morbid FXS and autism represent a distinct subtype of FXS, with more impairment in receptive language and theory of mind even when controlling for their lower non-verbal IQ relative to those with only FXS. The greater cognitive impairments observed in those with co-morbid FXS and autism continues into adolescence and young adulthood; and the autism seen in those with FXS appears to be the same as idiopathic autism.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2006

Psychological well-being of mothers of youth with fragile X syndrome: syndrome specificity and within-syndrome variability.

BACKGROUND: Research on parental well-being has focused largely on Down syndrome and autism; however, fragile X syndrome is likely to pose different challenges for parents compared with these other diagnostic conditions. Moreover, there is considerable variability among youth with fragile X syndrome; for example, 25% to 33% of affected youth meet criteria for a co-morbid diagnosis of autism. It is likely that parents of youth with fragile X syndrome will experience different degrees and patterns of stress, depending on whether their offspring do or do not have a co-morbid diagnosis of autism. In the present study, we compared mothers of three groups of young males on measures of psychological well-being and stress: those with fragile X syndrome and a co-morbid diagnosis of autism; those with fragile X syndrome alone; and those with Down syndrome. METHOD: The sample consisted of mothers of adolescent and young adult males with fragile X syndrome and co-morbid autism (n=9), fragile X syndrome alone (n=19), and Down syndrome (n=19). We screened all youth for autism using the Autism Behavior Checklist, which was completed by mothers, fathers and teachers, and the youth who scored above the suggested cut-off were evaluated by a licensed psychologist to determine autism status. The three groups of youth did not differ in chronological age (16.4, 15.8 and 16.0 years, respectively) or non-verbal mental age (3.8, 3.9 and 3.8 years, respectively). Several self-report measures were completed by mothers. These measures assessed current mental health status (e.g. the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale), perceptions of their son's and family's functioning (e.g. the Positive Affect Index, which measures closeness felt by the mother to her son and also reciprocated closeness felt by the son towards the mother, as perceived by the mother), and approach to coping with their son's disability [e.g. the Multidimensional Coping Inventory (COPE), which measures emotion-focused and problem-solving focused coping]. RESULTS: The results suggest that fragile X syndrome creates more challenges to maternal psychological well-being than Down syndrome, and that the combination of fragile X syndrome and autism can be particularly challenging. Differences among groups, however, were manifested mainly as concerns about the affected son and about relationships within the family rather than as lower levels of mental health. Thus, mothers of sons with fragile X syndrome, regardless of the son's autism status, reported more pessimism about the son's future and more conflict within the family than mothers of sons with Down syndrome. Additionally, mothers of sons with fragile X syndrome and co-morbid autism reported lower levels of reciprocated closeness than the other two groups of mothers. CONCLUSION: We consider possible causes of these maternal differences, the implications for clinical practice, needs for future research, and the importance of understanding child and contextual factors as well as the dynamics leading to these differences.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed2004

Relationship between theory of mind and language ability in children and adolescents with intellectual disability.

BACKGROUND: The present study was designed to evaluate the validity of the false belief task as a measure of theory of mind development in individuals with intellectual disability (ID). In most if it variants, the false belief task is linguistically demanding. This raises the possibility that the finding that individuals with ID do poorly on it might reflect language difficulties rather than theory of mind difficulties. Complicating matters further, however, is the fact that there are theoretical reasons to suppose that there might be a relationship between some dimensions of language ability and theory of mind development in individuals with ID (as well as in other populations). METHOD: In the present study, children and adolescents with ID and typically developing (non-verbal) mental age matches completed a standard false belief task and several tasks designed to measure language ability. RESULTS: We reasoned that a pattern in which false belief performance was correlated with all measures of language ability would reflect an artefactual relationship, whereas a more highly circumscribed, theoretically sensible pattern of correlations that was similar across both groups would support the validity of the false belief task. CONCLUSIONS: The results indicated that for individuals with ID who have limited narrative language skills, those limitations contribute substantially to their failure on the false belief task. For individuals with ID who have more highly developed narrative language skills (about 40% of the sample tested), however, the false belief task may provide a valid measure of their progress towards acquiring an adequate theory of mind. This latter conclusion was suggested by the fact screening out individuals who failed to meet linguistic and cognitive prerequisites for dealing with the performance demands of the false belief task yielded non-significant correlations between false belief performance and the language measures for both the group with ID and the typically developing comparison group.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2001

Theoretical perspectives on language and communication problems in mental retardation and developmental disabilities.

We argue that researchers interested in language and communication problems in mental retardation or any other developmental disorder should view such problems as emerging within the broader context of the behavioral profile, or phenotype, associated with a particular genetic condition. This will require understanding the direct and indirect effects of genes on the development of language and communication and thereby an understanding of the complex relations that exist between language and other dimensions of psychological and behavioral functioning as well as an understanding of the environments in which the developing person acts and is acted upon. We believe that the dominant model for understanding language and communication problems--the nativist approach, which emphasizes the child's innate capacity for acquiring language and characterizes language as consisting of a set of context-free deterministic rules that operate on abstract representations--is inconsistent with an emphasis on indirect genetic effects. We review recent evidence that undermines the nativist approach--evidence concerning the initial state of the language-learning child, the role of environmental input, the competence-performance distinction, and modularity. In place of nativism, we argue for Emergentism, which is a model in which language is seen to emerge from the interaction between the child's biological abilities to map statistical properties of the language input into a distributed representation and the characteristics of the language learning environment and for the purpose of engaging in real-time, meaningful language use.

Child↗
PubMed2001

Children's judgements about intentionally and unintentionally broken promises.

Astington (1988) found that seven- to nine-year-olds often fail to distinguish between promises and predictions when judging the utterances of characters in simple stories. Instead, these children attend only to the outcome of the story (i.e. whether the promised event occurred) when deciding whether a promise has been made and, to a lesser extent, when deciding whether the speaker is responsible for the outcome. The purpose of the present study was to examine whether seven- to nine-year-olds (a) vary their judgements of responsibility according to the reason that the promised action was not completed, and (b) recognize that an unfulfilled promise is a promise regardless of whether the speaker's failure is unavoidable or intentional. Seven-year-olds, nine-year-olds, and adults were asked to make promise and responsibility judgements for two story types: stories in which the promiser intentionally failed to fulfill his or her promise and stories in which an unforeseen event prevented the promiser from fulfilling the promise. Participants at all ages assigned responsibility correctly across both story types. In making promise judgements, however, the seven-year-olds' decisions about promises reflected a misguided attention to the outcome of a promise or the obstacle to its fulfillment. The nine-year-olds recognized that an unfulfilled promise is a promise but only when there was a clear reason for the speaker's failure to fulfill his or her obligation. We suggest that children consider only sincere promises to be instances of promising and make inferences about speaker sincerity by looking to external factors in the communicative context.

Behavior↗
PubMed2001

The linguistic and cognitive profile of Down syndrome: evidence from a comparison with fragile X syndrome.

In this paper, we report on the results of our research, which is designed to address two broad questions about the cognitive and linguistic profile of Down syndrome: (1) Which domains of functioning are especially impaired in individuals with Down syndrome? and (2) Which aspects of the language and cognitive profile of Down syndrome are syndrome specific? To address these questions, we focused on three dimensions of the Down syndrome profile--receptive language, expressive language, and theory of mind--and made comparisons to individuals with fragile X syndrome, which is an X-linked form of intellectual disability. We identified Down syndrome impairments on all three dimensions that were substantially greater than those seen in nonverbal cognition and that were not shared by individuals with fragile X syndrome. Clinical implications of these findings are considered.

Cognition Disorders↗
PubMed1999

Parental scaffolding of the discourse of children and adolescents with intellectual disability: the case of, referential expressions.

Individuals with intellectual disability find the process of establishing referents to be an especially challenging component of discourse. The present study was designed to examine whether these problems partly result from a failure of parents to appropriately scaffold the discourse participation of individuals with intellectual disability. Children and adolescents with intellectual disability and their parents participated in two dyadic non-face-to-face referential tasks which afforded parents an opportunity to scaffold their children's behaviour as speaker and as listener. Comparisons were made with parents and their typically developing children who completed the same tasks. It was found that the parents of individuals with intellectual disability scaffolded their children's discourse participation to the same extent, as effectively and in the same manner as the parents of the typically developing children. The former were also found to adjust their scaffolding according to their children's level of behavioural competence. In summary, there is no evidence that parents contribute to the referential problems of individuals with intellectual disability.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1998

Young children's understanding of promising: methodological considerations.

In her inceptive study of promising, Astington (1988) found that five-year-olds failed to distinguish promises from predictions when judging story characters' utterances. Instead, their responses were based on whether the promised event had actually occurred. There is reason to believe, however, that the children's poor performance was an artefact of Astington's procedures. We tested this possibility with 32 children (mean age 5;8: range 5;7-6;2) by including several variations of Astington's procedures, but found no effects on the pattern of results. This suggests that Astington's findings are an accurate reflection of the developmental course of knowledge about promising.

Child↗
PubMed1998

Understanding referential expressions in context: use of common ground by children and adolescents with mental retardation.

Listeners interpret utterances against the common ground, or network of presuppositions shared with the speaker. The first purpose of the study was to determine whether individuals with mental retardation use the major sources of common ground (i.e., physical copresence, linguistic copresence, and community membership) to resolve referential ambiguity. The second purpose was to determine whether they seek confirmation of their referent choices in accordance with the certainty of interpretation afforded by the common ground. The third purpose was to determine whether they signal noncomprehension when faced with ambiguity and common ground that is not informative. The final purpose was to evaluate the relationship between within-group variability in common ground use and measures of nonverbal cognition, receptive and expressive language, and social cognition. Participants were school-age individuals with mental retardation and typically developing children matched to them on nonverbal MA. Common ground use was examined in a role-playing task in which the participant responded to ambiguous utterances. Common ground was manipulated within participants. We determined whether referent selections were appropriate for the common ground, whether they were accompanied by confirmation requests, and whether noncomprehension was signaled. Both groups used all sources of common ground to resolve referential ambiguity at better than chance levels but were less successful in using community membership. Both groups also requested confirmation of their referent choices most often when the common ground was based on community membership. Both groups signaled noncomprehension when the common ground was not informative. Different aspects of common ground use were related to different predictors for the group with mental retardation.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1997

Signaling of noncomprehension by children and adolescents with mental retardation: effects of problem type and speaker identity.

Previous research has demonstrated considerable within-individual and within-group variability in the signaling of noncomprehension by persons with mental retardation. The first purpose of this study was to determine whether within-individual variability in such signaling was related to differences in the nature of the inadequate message and the identity of the speaker. The second purpose was to evaluate the relationship between within-group variability in noncomprehension signaling and measures of cognition, receptive and excessive language ability, speech intelligibility, and social cognition. Participants were school-age individuals with mild mental retardation and typically developing children matched to them on nonverbal MA. Noncomprehension signaling was examined in a direction-following task in which inadequate message type and speaker were manipulated. It was found that message type, but not speaker, influenced noncomprehension signaling, with no difference between the two groups. We also found that performance on a test of receptive language ability was the best predictor of noncomprehension signaling for persons with mental retardation.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1995

Effects of sampling context on the expressive language of children and adolescents with mental retardation.

This study was designed to determine whether conversational samples of language should be supplemented with samples obtained in narrative, or storytelling, contexts when evaluating the expressive language skills of individuals with mental retardation. Language samples were elicited in both conversational and narrative contexts from 16 school-age individuals with mental retardation and 16 typically developing children matched to them on MA. An analysis of the samples demonstrated that both groups produced more syntactically complex language in narration than in conversation, whereas they were more talkative in conversation than in narration. These results suggest that conversational and narrative contexts should be used together when evaluating the expressive language performance of individuals with mental retardation.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1993

Development of a theory of mind in individuals with mental retardation.

The ability of adolescents with mental retardation to reason about other people's mental states was examined. Subjects were asked questions about the knowledge and beliefs of characters in stories that they heard and saw enacted with props. The adolescents with mental retardation performed worse than did children without mental retardation matched for MA. The adolescents with mental retardation did better on questions requiring first-order reasoning than on those involving second-order reasoning; this pattern is similar to that found previously for children without mental retardation.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1992

Interpreting and responding to spoken language: children's recognition and use of a speaker's goal.

This study had two purposes. The first was to examine age differences in the extent to which children infer and use a speaker's interpersonal goal to understand speech acts. To this end, the subjects responded to Do you have...? requests in a role-playing task. The goal behind such a request is implicit in the speaker's choice of noun phrase. We sought to determine whether children, like adults, use the noun phrase to infer the speaker's goal and thereby decide whether the request is a yes-no question or a directive. The second purpose was to examine age differences in the extent to which children select responses that carry implications appropriate to the speaker's interpersonal goal. To do this, Do you have...? requests containing general category labels were addressed to the children when they possessed all the category exemplars and when they possessed only a few exemplars. A simple yes implies that the listener has nearly all exemplars and, therefore, is inappropriate for the speaker's goal in the latter situation. The subjects were six-, seven-, nine-, and eleven-year-olds and adults, with 12 subjects per age. Only the eleven-year-olds and the adults used the speaker's noun phrase and considered the implications of yes.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

Relation between receptive language and cognitive maturity in persons with mental retardation.

We examined the correlations between receptive language level and performance on indices of nonverbal cognitive functioning for 20 persons with mental retardation and for 20 children without mental retardation matched to them on nonverbal MA. The correlations suggested that the retarded group focused on the formal, sequential properties of language. The correlations also suggested that the nondisabled group placed less emphasis on the formal, sequential properties of language and more on semantic, conceptual properties. These differences in approach may explain why the persons with mental retardation did poorly on the task of understanding spoken language compared to the children without mental retardation.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1991

Identifying the referents of spoken messages: use of context and clarification requests by children with and without mental retardation.

The ability of children with mental retardation and of children without mental retardation matched to them on nonverbal MA to use (a) contextual information and (b) clarification requests to resolve referential ambiguity was evaluated. Each child pretended to be a storekeeper and responded to an adult customer's ambiguous requests. The context disambiguated the request in some cases, but not in others. Both groups of children selected the appropriate referent when the context was informative. Only the children without mental retardation appropriately requested clarification when the context was uninformative. Referential performance was not related to their receptive language level or nonverbal MAs.

Child↗
PubMed1990

The language of children with spina bifida and hydrocephalus: meeting task demands and mastering syntax.

Children with hydrocephalus are thought to exhibit deficiencies in their linguistic performance, including the production of numerous off-topic utterances and semantically immature responses to linguistically posed problems (e.g., questions, word definitions). The hydrocephalic children included in many previous studies, however, have been mentally retarded. We sought to determine whether these language problems also characterized intellectually average children with hydrocephalus. A second purpose was to evaluate the hypothesis that the language problems of hydrocephalic children occur predominantly on tasks with high cognitive or linguistic demands. A third purpose was to reexamine the claim that despite their semantic-pragmatic deficiencies, the syntax of hydrocephalic children is age appropriate. Our hydrocephalic subjects dealt with the semantic-pragmatic requirements of linguistically posed problems in an age-appropriate manner, and although their performance on these problems declined as task demands increased, the decline was no more than that seen for nondisabled age-matches. The hydrocephalic children did not differ significantly from nondisabled age-matches on measures of productive syntactic maturity.

Child↗
PubMed1989

Relation between the receptive language and mental age of persons with mental retardation.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether the development of receptive language lags behind nonverbal cognitive development in school age persons with mental retardation. The relation between receptive language and nonverbal MA was examined as a function of MA level and the linguistic form to be understood. Individual differences in the receptive language-MA relation were also investigated. Results indicated that the relation between receptive language and MA varied across MA levels, linguistic forms, and individuals at the same MA for listeners with mental retardation.

Age Factors↗