Fine and gross motor skills predict later psychosocial maladaptation and academic achievement.

Background: Difficulties in fine and gross motor skills are often overlooked as developmental problems, although approximately 6-13% of all school-age children have poor motor coordination. Understanding motor coordination is important from the perspective of school adaptation. This longitudinal cohort study aimed to determine whether fine and gross motor skills in preschool children predict later academic achievement and psychosocial maladaptation.

Referential framework for transcranial anatomical correspondence for fNIRS based on manually traced sulci and gyri of an infant brain.

Functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), which is compact, portable, and tolerant of body movement, is suitable for monitoring infant brain functions. Nevertheless, fNIRS also poses a technical problem in that it cannot provide structural information. Supplementation with structural magnetic resonance images (MRI) is not always feasible for infants who undergo fNIRS measurement.

Rapid maturation of voice and linguistic processing systems in preschool children: a near-infrared spectroscopic study.

To better understand how voice and linguistic processing systems develop during the preschool years, changes in cerebral oxygenation were measured bilaterally from temporal areas using multi-channel near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). NIRS was recorded while children listened to their mothers' voice (MV), an unfamiliar female voice (UV) and environmental sound (ES) stimuli. Twenty typical children (aged 3-6years) were divided into younger (Y) (n=10, male=5; aged 3-4.

Individuals with Asperger's disorder exhibit difficulty in switching attention from a local level to a global level.

The purpose of the present study was to determine whether individuals with Asperger's disorder exhibit difficulty in switching attention from a local level to a global level. Eleven participants with Asperger's disorder and 11 age- and gender-matched healthy controls performed a level-repetition switching task using Navon-type hierarchical stimuli. In both groups, level-repetition was beneficial at both levels.

Utility of the Japanese version of the Checklist for Autism in Toddlers for predicting pervasive developmental disorders at age 2.

We evaluated the utility of the Japanese version of the Checklist for Autism in Toddlers for predicting pervasive developmental disorders (PDD) among 2-year-old children in clinical settings. Confirmed diagnosis revealed that the pass rate on four items (social interest, proto-imperative pointing, proto-declarative pointing and joint-attention) was significantly lower in 52 PDD children than in 48 non-PDD children, and if abnormal development was reported in two or more items, the sensitivity, specificity, and positive/negative predictive values for PDD diagnosis were 0.85, 0.