Assessing adherence and clinical utility of modified goal management training for adolescents with ADHD: A pilot study.

Many adolescents with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have executive functioning (EF) difficulties that contribute to academic and social-emotional challenges. This pilot explored adherence to and effectiveness of modified Goal Management Training (GMT), an EF intervention, with ADHD youth. Six adolescents with ADHD (14-17 years, 2 female) participated in a 6-session online group.

The Post-Concussion Symptom Scale: Normative Data for Adolescent Student-Athletes Stratified by Gender and Preexisting Conditions.

Background: The Post-Concussion Symptom Scale (PCSS) is a self-report questionnaire measuring symptoms that commonly occur after a concussion; however, these symptoms are nonspecific and can be related to co-occurring orthopaedic injuries (eg, cervical strain) or patient characteristics and preexisting conditions, even in the absence of a recent injury. As such, clinicians may have difficulty determining whether symptom elevations are attributable to a recent concussion as opposed to a confounding injury or a preexisting condition, which may be especially difficult when preinjury baseline symptom data are unavailable.

Purpose: This study aimed to further validate the 4-factor model of the PCSS (ie, cognitive, sleep-arousal, physical, and affective symptoms) with adolescent student-athletes and provide normative reference data for each factor and the total score, stratified by gender and preexisting health conditions.

Why might negative mood help or hinder inhibitory performance? An exploration of thinking styles using a Navon induction.

Theories of affective influences on cognition posit that negative mood may increase cognitive load, causing a decrement in task performance (Seibert & Ellis, [1991]. Irrelevant thoughts, emotional mood states, and cognitive task performance. , (5), 507-513), or cause a shift to more analytic thinking, which benefits tasks requiring attention to detail (Schwarz & Clore, [1983].

Hospital-Based Modified Cogmed Working Memory Training for Youth With ADHD.

Objective: This study evaluated a modified working memory training program, Cogmed, for ADHD youth.

Method: Forty youth were randomized to modified Cogmed training (MCT) or treatment as usual (CON). MCT was delivered in an outpatient mental health clinic in 3 weekly 35-minute sessions with a dedicated coach for 10 weeks.

Trauma exposure and mental health in a community sample of children and youth.

Objective: Childhood trauma is common and has implications for mental health. Research conducted retrospectively with clinical samples of adults and prospectively with high-risk samples of children has identified factors that moderate negative mental health sequelae (e.g.

How do adverse childhood experiences impact health? Exploring the mediating role of executive functions.

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are stressful life events that occur during development. It is well-established that ACE exposure has negative downstream implications for a broad range of health-related behaviors, ultimately hastening mortality. Underlying mechanisms linking the experience of early life adversity with poor health remain less understood, however, and thus potential targets for intervention remain elusive.

Global executive dysfunction, not core executive skills, mediate the relationship between adversity exposure and later health in undergraduate students.

Executive function (EF) represents a set of higher-order cognitive skills that permit engagement in goal-oriented behavior. EF deficits are associated with wide-ranging negative health-related consequences, including psychopathology and engagement in risky health-related behaviors. Because neural substrates supporting EF develop over a protracted period of time, an extended window of vulnerability exists whereby environmental stressors can interrupt development, culminating in lifelong EF deficits.

Examining the Impact of Motivation on Working Memory Training in Youth With ADHD.

Objective: Working memory (WM) is often a deficit in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and is related to other impairments within this clinical population. Cogmed, a computerized WM training program, is sometimes prescribed as a treatment for ADHD youth - although the efficacy of this intervention remains controversial. Our main objective was to explore whether ADHD youths' motivational style predicted training engagement or performance on outcome measures.

The Emotion Word Fluency Test (EWFT): Initial psychometric, validation, and physiological evidence in young adults.

Introduction: The clinical assessment of affective functioning has been slow to incorporate findings from affective neuroscience. Of particular interest in the current study is the assessment of affective word production.

Method: In a series of four studies, we examined test-retest and interrater reliability for the Emotion Word Fluency Test (EWFT), basic construct validity with existing verbal fluency measures, physiological responses across verbal fluency tasks, and a novel scoring method to examine qualitative aspects of participant response sets.

Clinical, Sociobiological, and Cognitive Predictors of ADHD Persistence in Children Followed Prospectively Over Time.

With increasing awareness that ADHD is chronically disabling, a burgeoning literature has examined childhood clinical indicators of ADHD persistence. This study investigates whether childhood factors reflecting biological risk and cognitive reserve have additive predictive value for the persistence of ADHD that is unique beyond childhood indicators of disorder severity. One-hundred thirty children with ADHD (mean age = 8.

Ratings of Everyday Executive Functioning (REEF): A parent-report measure of preschoolers' executive functioning skills.

Executive functioning (EF) facilitates the development of academic, cognitive, and social-emotional skills and deficits in EF are implicated in a broad range of child psychopathologies. Although EF has clear implications for early development, the few questionnaires that assess EF in preschoolers tend to ask parents for global judgments of executive dysfunction and thus do not cover the full range of EF within the preschool age group. Here we present a new measure of preschoolers' EF-the Ratings of Everyday Executive Functioning (REEF)-that capitalizes on parents' observations of their preschoolers' (i.

How your executive functioning impacts me: Findings from a normative sample of older couples.

Although executive functioning (EF) has implications for one's emotional functioning and interpersonal behavior, and EF skills become more variable as we age, little research has investigated whether normative age-related changes in EF impact social-emotional outcomes in close others. The current study used a dyadic approach to examine the impact of individual differences in core aspects of EF on indices of well-being in 91 married or cohabiting couples aged 55 years and older. Participants in each dyad completed EF tasks of inhibition, working memory, and task switching, control tasks of language and short-term memory (STM) in which EF demands were comparatively minimal, and self-report measures of depression and quality of life.

Social Communication is Predicted by Inhibitory Ability and ADHD Traits in Preschool-Aged Children: A Mediation Model.

Objective: Given the role inhibitory control plays in both ADHD and communication, this study examined whether inattentive and hyperactive-impulsive traits mediate the impact of weak inhibitory ability upon the knowledge and application of pragmatic rules early in development.

Method: Participants were 36 typically developing preschoolers and their caregivers. ADHD traits were assessed per caregiver report.

Childhood ADHD and addictive behaviours in adolescence: a canadian sample.

Objective: To compare rates of early addictive behaviours in a clinic sample of youth with childhood attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) with those in community populations.

Method: We surveyed 142 adolescents (14.1 ± 1.

The persistence of cognitive deficits in remitted and unremitted ADHD: a case for the state-independence of response inhibition.

Background: Response inhibition, working memory, and response variability are possible endophenotypes of ADHD based on their association with the disorder and evidence of heritability. One of the critical although rarely studied criteria for a valid endophenotype is that it persists despite waxing and waning of the overt manifestations of the disorder, a criterion known as state-independence. This study examined whether these aspects of cognition exhibit state-independence in ADHD.

Mapping the development of response inhibition in young children using a modified day-night task.

Response inhibition was examined in 40 children 3½ to 8 years of age using a modified day-night task. Performance in a neutral condition explained variance in congruent and incongruent conditions, indicating that age-related improvements in these latter conditions were partly mediated by working memory and processing speed. After controlling for neutral performance, age did not explain variance in congruent performance but explained variance in incongruent performance.

A latent variables examination of processing speed, response inhibition, and working memory during typical development.

This study addressed three related aims: (a) to replicate and extend previous work regarding the nonunitary nature of processing speed, response inhibition, and working memory during development; (b) to quantify the rate at which processing speed, response inhibition, and working memory develop and the extent to which the development of these latter abilities reflect general changes in processing speed; and (c) to evaluate whether commonly used tasks of processing speed, response inhibition, and working memory are valid and reliable when used with a developmentally diverse group. To address these aims, a latent variables approach was used to analyze data from 147 participants 6-24years of age. Results showed that processing speed, response inhibition, and working memory were separable abilities and that the extent of this separability was stable across the age range of participants.

Is the behavior rating inventory of executive function more strongly associated with measures of impairment or executive function?

The Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF) is commonly used in the assessment of children and adolescents presenting with a wide range of concerns. It is unclear, however, whether the questionnaire is more closely related to general measures of behavioral disruption and impairment or to specific measures of executive function. In the present study, associations between the Behavioral Regulation Index and Metacognition Index of the BRIEF and cognitive, behavioral, and academic measures were examined in a sample of clinic-referred youth (n = 60) and healthy youth (n = 37) 6-15 years of age.

Functional developmental similarities and differences in the neural correlates of verbal and nonverbal working memory tasks.

Relatively little is known about the functional development of verbal and nonverbal working memory during adolescence. Behavioral studies have demonstrated that WM capacity increases with age, yet relatively few studies have assessed the relationship between brain-activity and age-related changes in WM capacity, especially as it differs across multiple domains. The present study used an n-back task and functional magnetic resonance imaging to assess age-related differences in the neural correlates of word and face working memory tasks.

Performance on an episodic encoding task yields further insight into functional brain development.

To further characterize changes in functional brain development that are associated with the emergence of cognitive control, participants 14 to 28 years of age were scanned while performing an episodic encoding task with a levels-of-processing manipulation. Using data from the 12 youngest and oldest participants (endpoint groups), 18 regions were identified that showed group differences in task-related activity as a function of processing depth. One region, located in left inferior frontal gyrus, showed enhanced activity in deep relative to shallow encoding that was larger in magnitude for the older group.

Revisiting inhibitory control across the life span: insights from the ex-Gaussian distribution.

Changes in inhibitory control occur across the life span and have been associated with alterations in prefrontal function. In this study, ex-Gaussian analysis was used to reexamine data from an inhibitory control task. Participants (ages 6 to 82 years) composed three groups: children, young adults, and older adults.

An illusion of 3-D motion with the Ternus display.

We attempted to eliminate the percept of element motion in the Ternus display by connecting the display elements so that they appeared to be a single object. On each trial, the display elements (two discs) appeared either separated or connected (either via a white line or side by side) and subjects reported whether they observed element motion or group motion at various ISIs. Although it was hypothesized that element motion would be eliminated in the connected condition, subjects observed element motion at short ISIs in the form of a three dimensional illusion in which one element appeared to rotate out in front of (or behind) the other.