Development of Visual Acuity in Children: Assessing the Contributions of Cognition and Age in LEA Chart Acuity Readings.

Significance: The development of visual acuity has often been looked upon as a function of age. This study considers whether cognition might also be a predictor of acuity in children. The results indicate that cognition is a predictor of acuity and therefore should play a role in vision evaluations and developmental research.

Effects of daily consumption of wild blueberry on cognition and urinary metabolites in school-aged children: a pilot study.

Purpose: Acute intervention with wild blueberry (WBB) has previously revealed positive cognitive and mood effects in typically developing children; however, it is unclear whether effects persist after daily supplementation. In addition, no data have been published exploring the metabolite profiles of children following berry consumption, to our knowledge. A study of this kind could provide insight into a mechanism of action for the cognitive and mood improvements observed previously in children.

No evidence for a relationship between social closeness and similarity in resting-state functional brain connectivity in schoolchildren.

Previous research suggests that the proximity of individuals in a social network predicts how similarly their brains respond to naturalistic stimuli. However, the relationship between social connectedness and brain connectivity in the absence of external stimuli has not been examined. To investigate whether neural homophily between friends exists at rest we collected resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data from 68 school-aged girls, along with social network information from all pupils in their year groups (total 5,066 social dyads).

The effect of asymmetrical accommodation on anisometropic amblyopia treatment outcomes.

Background: Previous research has revealed that the majority of children with anisometropic amblyopia have asymmetrical accommodation. The aim of this preliminary study was to determine whether the type of accommodation response was associated with a poor amblyopia treatment outcome in the same patients.

Methods: The type of accommodation response of 26 children with anisometropic amblyopia was determined in a previous study.

Sensitivity to Inflectional Morphemes in the Absence of Meaning: Evidence from a Novel Task.

A number of studies in different languages have shown that speakers may be sensitive to the presence of inflectional morphology in the absence of verb meaning (Caramazza et al. in Cognition 28(3):297-332, 1988; Clahsen in Behav Brain Sci 22(06):991-1013, 1999; Post et al. in Cognition 109(1):1-17, 2008).

The role of noninitial clusters in the Children's Test of Nonword Repetition: Evidence from children with language impairment and typically developing children.

The Children's Test of Nonword Repetition (CNRep) is one of the most popular tests of nonword repetition. The test is composed of nonwords of different length, and normative data suggest that children experience more difficulties in repeating long nonwords. An analysis of the distribution of phonological clusters in the test shows that noninitial clusters are unequally distributed in the test: They only appear in long nonwords (four and five syllables).

The effects of acute wild blueberry supplementation on the cognition of 7-10-year-old schoolchildren.

Purpose: Previous evidence suggests consumption of flavonoids, a sub-class of polyphenols, is associated with improved cognitive function across the lifespan. In particular, acute intervention of a flavonoid-rich wild blueberry (WBB) drink has been shown to boost executive function (EF), short-term memory and mood 2-6 h post-consumption in 7-10-year-old children. However, confirmation of the aspects of EF and memory susceptible to WBB ingestion is required, particularly during childhood, a critical period of neurological development.

Asymmetrical accommodation in hyperopic anisometropic amblyopia.

Background/aims: To investigate the presence of asymmetrical accommodation in hyperopic anisometropic amblyopia.

Methods: Accommodation in each eye and binocular vergence were measured simultaneously using a PlusoptiX SO4 photorefractor in 26 children aged 4-8 years with hyperopic anisometropic amblyopia and 13 controls (group age-matched) while they viewed a detailed target moving in depth.

Results: Without spectacles, only 5 (19%) anisometropes demonstrated symmetrical accommodation (within the 95% CI of the mean gain of the sound eye of the anisometropic group), whereas 21 (81%) demonstrated asymmetrical accommodation.

Convergence and Accommodation Development Is Preprogrammed in Premature Infants.

Purpose: This study investigated whether vergence and accommodation development in preterm infants is preprogrammed or is driven by experience.

Methods: Thirty-two healthy infants, born at mean 34 weeks gestation (range, 31.2-36 weeks), were compared with 45 healthy full-term infants (mean 40.

Word position and stress effects in consonant cluster perception and production.

The aim of the present study was to investigate whether the saliency effect for word beginnings reported in children with dyslexia (Marshall & Van der Lely, 2009) can be found also in typically developing children. Thirty-four typically developing Italian children aged 8-10 years completed two specifically designed tasks: a production task and a perception task. Both tasks used nonwords containing clusters consisting of plosive plus liquid (e.

Disparity-driven vs blur-driven models of accommodation and convergence in binocular vision and intermittent strabismus.

Purpose: To propose an alternative and practical model to conceptualize clinical patterns of concomitant intermittent strabismus, heterophoria, and convergence and accommodation anomalies.

Methods: Despite identical ratios, there can be a disparity- or blur-biased "style" in three hypothetical scenarios: normal; high ratio of accommodative convergence to accommodation (AC/A) and low ratio of convergence accommodation to convergence (CA/C); low AC/A and high CA/C. We calculated disparity bias indices (DBI) to reflect these biases and provide early objective data from small illustrative clinical groups that fit these styles.

Immediate auditory repetition of words and nonwords: an ERP study of lexical and sublexical processing.

ERPs were elicited to (1) words, (2) pseudowords derived from these words, and (3) nonwords with no lexical neighbors, in a task involving listening to immediately repeated auditory stimuli. There was a significant early (P200) effect of phonotactic probability in the first auditory presentation, which discriminated words and pseudowords from nonwords; and a significant somewhat later (N400) effect of lexicality, which discriminated words from pseudowords and nonwords. There was no reliable effect of lexicality in the ERPs to the second auditory presentation.

Change in convergence and accommodation after two weeks of eye exercises in typical young adults.

Background: Although eye exercises appear to help heterophoria, convergence insufficiency, and intermittent strabismus, results can be confounded by placebo, practice, and encouragement effects. This study assessed objective changes in vergence and accommodation responses in naive young adults after a 2-week period of eye exercises under controlled conditions to determine the extent to which treatment effects occur over other factors.

Methods: Asymptomatic young adults were randomly assigned to one of two no-treatment (control) groups or to one of six eye exercise groups: accommodation, vergence, both, convergence in excess of accommodation, accommodation in excess of convergence, and placebo.

Screening for convergence insufficiency using the CISS is not indicated in young adults.

Aim: This paper presents Convergence Insufficiency Symptom Survey (CISS) and orthoptic findings in a sample of typical young adults who considered themselves to have normal eyesight apart from weak spectacles.

Methods: The CISS questionnaire was administered, followed by a full orthoptic evaluation, to 167 university undergraduate and postgraduate students during the recruitment phase of another study. The primary criterion for recruitment to this study was that participants 'felt they had normal eyesight'.

Developmental changes in the balance of disparity, blur, and looming/proximity cues to drive ocular alignment and focus.

Accurate coordination of accommodation and convergence is necessary to view near objects and develop fine motor coordination. We used a remote haploscopic videorefraction paradigm to measure longitudinal changes in simultaneous ocular accommodation and vergence to targets at different depths, and to all combinations of blur, binocular disparity, and change-in-size ('proximity') cues. Infants were followed longitudinally and compared with older children and young adults, with the prediction that sensitivity to different cues would change during development.

Accommodation and vergence response gains to different near cues characterize specific esotropias.

Aim: To describe preliminary findings of how the profile of the use of blur, disparity, and proximal cues varies between non-strabismic groups and those with different types of esotropia.

Design: This was a case control study.

Methodology: A remote haploscopic photorefractor measured simultaneous convergence and accommodation to a range of targets containing all combinations of binocular disparity, blur, and proximal (looming) cues.

The clinical near gradient stimulus AC/A ratio correlates better with the response CA/C ratio than with the response AC/A ratio.

Aim: To provide evidence that a near clinical gradient AC/A ratio could instead reflect the CA/C relationship (the accommodation driven by response to disparity).

Design: Case control study.

Methodology: 27 emmetropic participants with heterophoria <4 PD, 19 with intermittent distance exotropia, and 17 with near exophoria >6 PD were tested.

Neural correlates of true and false memory in mild cognitive impairment.

The goal of this research was to investigate the changes in neural processing in mild cognitive impairment. We measured phase synchrony, amplitudes, and event-related potentials in veridical and false memory to determine whether these differed in participants with mild cognitive impairment compared with typical, age-matched controls. Empirical mode decomposition phase locking analysis was used to assess synchrony, which is the first time this analysis technique has been applied in a complex cognitive task such as memory processing.

Accommodative instability: relationship to progression of early onset myopia.

Background: In a previous study, we demonstrated that children with early onset myopia had greater instability of accommodation than a group of emmetropic children. Since that study was correlational, we were unable to determine the causal relationship between this and myopic progression. To address this, we examined the children two years later.

Evidence that convergence rather than accommodation controls intermittent distance exotropia.

Purpose: This study considered whether vergence drives accommodation or accommodation drives vergence during the control of distance exotropia for near fixation. High accommodative convergence to accommodation (AC/A) ratios are often used to explain this control, but the role of convergence to drive accommodation (the CA/C relationship) is rarely considered. Atypical CA/C characteristics could equally, or better, explain common clinical findings.

Decreased accommodation during decompensation of distance exotropia.

Objective: Disparity cues can be a major drive to accommodation via the convergence accommodation to convergence (CA/C) linkage, but, on decompensation of exotropia, disparity cues are extinguished by suppression so this drive is lost. This study investigated accommodation and vergence responses to disparity, blur and proximal cues in a group of distance exotropes aged between 4 and 11 years both during decompensation and when exotropic.

Methods: 19 participants with distance exotropia were tested using a PlusoptiXSO4 photo refractor set in a remote haploscopic device that assessed simultaneous vergence and accommodation to a range of targets incorporating different combinations of blur, disparity and proximal cues at four fixation distances between 2 m and 33 cm.

Independent and reciprocal accommodation in anisometropic amblyopia.

Accommodation is considered to be a symmetrical response and to be driven by the least ametropic and nonamblyopic eye in anisometropia. We report the case of a 4-year-old child with anisometropic amblyopia who accommodates asymmetrically, reliably demonstrating normal accommodation in the nonamblyopic eye and antiaccommodation of the amblyopic eye to near targets. The abnormal accommodation of the amblyopic eye remained largely unchanged during 7 subsequent testing sessions undertaken over the course of therapy.

Hypo-accommodation responses in hypermetropic infants and children.

Aims: Accommodation to overcome hypermetropia is implicated in emmetropisation. This study recorded accommodation responses in a wide range of emmetropising infants and older children with clinically significant hypermetropia to assess common characteristics and differences.

Methods: A PlusoptiXSO4 photorefractor in a laboratory setting was used to collect binocular accommodation data from participants viewing a detailed picture target moving between 33 cm and 2 m.

Using a runway paradigm to assess the relative strength of rats' motivations for enrichment objects.

Laboratory animals should be provided with enrichment objects in their cages; however, it is first necessary to test whether the proposed enrichment objects provide benefits that increase the animals' welfare. The two main paradigms currently used to assess proposed enrichment objects are the choice test, which is limited to determining relative frequency of choice, and consumer demand studies, which can indicate the strength of a preference but are complex to design. Here, we propose a third methodology: a runway paradigm, which can be used to assess the strength of an animal's motivation for enrichment objects, is simpler to use than consumer demand studies, and is faster to complete than typical choice tests.