Cognitive flexibility in children with Developmental Language Disorder: Drawing of nonexistent objects.

Cognitive flexibility is the ability to adapt thoughts and behaviors to new environments. Previous studies investigating cognitive flexibility in children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) present contradictory findings. In the current study, cognitive flexibility was assessed in 5- and 6-year-old preschoolers with DLD (n = 23) and peers with typical development (TD; n = 50) using a nonexistent object drawing (NEOD) task.

Different post-training processes in children's and adults' motor skill learning.

Do young children and adults share similar underlying motor skill learning mechanisms? Past studies have shown that school-aged children's speed of performance developed over wake periods of a few hours post-training. Such training-dependent gains were not found in adults. In the current study of children as young as 5-years-old and young adults who practiced a simple grapho-motor task, this finding was replicated only by the children that showed faster performance a few hours post-training.