Neurological soft signs and school achievement: the mediating effects of sustained attention.

A group of 115 black male adolescents drawn from a clinically unselected birth cohort, half of whom were known to have had neurological soft signs at age 7, were examined at age 17 to determine the relation between soft signs and performance on standard tests of school achievement and sustained attention. Three signs measured at age 17--dysgraphesthesia, difficulties with rapid alternating movements (dysdiadochokinesis), and motor slowness--were related to lower concurrent and past IQ and to impaired performance on laboratory and paper-and-pencil measures of sustained attention. The relation between signs and the attentional measures remained significant after IQ was statistically controlled.