Are restricted and repetitive behaviours in two- and six-year-olds associated with emotional and behavioural difficulties?

Background: Restricted and repetitive patterns of behaviour (RRBs) serve an adaptive role in development. Elevated levels of RRBs beyond the early years, however, are associated with poorer outcome in language, cognition, and wellbeing, and are seen across a range of neurodevelopmental conditions. This study aimed to characterize the association of distinct RRB subtypes at two and six years of age, with internalising and externalising difficulties in a community sample of children.

Processing of Synonyms and Homographs in Bilingual and Monolingual Speakers.

Bilinguals have long-lasting experience with cross-language double-mappings (i.e., translation equivalents and interlingual homographs (or false friends)).

Heterogeneity in children's reading comprehension difficulties: A latent class approach.

Background: Poor comprehenders are traditionally identified as having below-average reading comprehension, average-range word reading, and a discrepancy between the two. While oral language tends to be low in poor comprehenders, reading is a complex trait and heterogeneity may go undetected by group-level comparisons.

Methods: We took a preregistered data-driven approach to identify poor comprehenders and examine whether multiple distinct cognitive profiles underlie their difficulties.

Anxiety disorders across middle childhood and early adolescence in a UK population-based cohort.

Background: Patterns of development and underlying factors explaining anxiety disorders in children and adolescents are under-researched, despite their high prevalence, impact and associations with other mental disorders. We aimed to a] understand the pattern and persistence of specific anxiety disorders; b] examine differing trajectories of symptoms of specific anxiety disorders and; c] examine socio-demographic and health-related predictors of persistent anxiety disorder-specific symptoms, across middle childhood to early adolescence.

Methods: The current study used data from 8122 participants in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children birth cohort.

Shared storybook reading with children at family risk of dyslexia.

Background: Shared storybook reading is an important context for language learning and often constitutes young children's first encounter with the printed word. The quality of early shared reading interactions is a known predictor of language and reading development, but few studies have examined these interactions in children at family risk of dyslexia.

Methods: This exploratory study describes the quality of shared storybook reading between mothers and their 3- to 4-year-old children at family risk of dyslexia (FR;  = 18) in comparison with dyads with no known risk (no-FR;  = 13).

Comprehension of concrete and abstract words in semantic dementia.

The vast majority of brain-injured patients with semantic impairment have better comprehension of concrete than abstract words. In contrast, several patients with semantic dementia (SD), who show circumscribed atrophy of the anterior temporal lobes bilaterally, have been reported to show reverse imageability effects, that is, relative preservation of abstract knowledge. Although these reports largely concern individual patients, some researchers have recently proposed that superior comprehension of abstract concepts is a characteristic feature of SD.