Associations of ethnicity and SES with IQ and achievement in spina bifida meningomyelocele.

Objectives: We evaluated whether the phenotypic pattern of higher verbal than nonverbal IQ in children with spina bifida meningomyelocele (SBM) is consistent across subgroups differing in ethnicity and SES. We also explored the relation of cognitive and academic performance.

Methods: Non-Hispanic White (n = 153) and Hispanic (n = 80) children with SBM received the Stanford Binet Test of Intelligence-IV and achievement subtests of the Woodcock-Johnson.

Sustained attention in children with two etiologies of early hydrocephalus.

Several studies have shown that children with spina bifida meningomyelocele (SBM) and hydrocephalus have attention problems on parent ratings and difficulties in stimulus orienting associated with a posterior brain attention system. Less is known about response control and inhibition associated with an anterior brain attention system. Using the Gordon Vigilance Task (Gordon, 1983), we studied error rate, reaction time, and performance over time for sustained attention, a key anterior attention function, in 101 children with SBM, 17 with aqueductal stenosis (AS; another condition involving congenital hydrocephalus), and 40 typically developing controls (NC).

Traumatic brain injury in young children: postacute effects on cognitive and school readiness skills.

Previous studies have documented weaknesses in cognitive ability and early academic readiness in young children with traumatic brain injury (TBI). However, few of these studies have rigorously controlled for demographic characteristics, examined the effects of TBI severity on a wide range of skills, or explored moderating influences of environmental factors on outcomes. To meet these objectives, each of three groups of children with TBI (20 with severe, 64 with moderate, and 15 with mild) were compared with a group of 117 children with orthopedic injuries (OI group).