Alice S Carter — Page 2

PubMed1998

Visual-motor integration functioning in children with Tourette syndrome.

A neuropsychological model of visual-motor integration skill was proposed and tested in 50 children with Tourette syndrome (TS) and 23 unaffected control children matched for age. Children with TS performed significantly worse than control children on the Beery Visual-Motor Integration (VMI) Test. Consistent with the proposed model, visuoperceptual and fine-motor coordination subprocesses were significant predictors of VMI scores. However, the subprocesses did not fully account for the diagnostic group difference on the VMI. These results suggest that the integration of visual inputs and organized motor output is a specific area of neuropsychological weakness among individuals with TS.

Adolescent↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Elucidating early mechanisms of developmental psychopathology: the case of prenatal smoking and disruptive behavior.

There is a robust association between prenatal smoking and disruptive behavior disorders, but little is known about the emergence of such behaviors in early development. The association of prenatal smoking and hypothesized behavioral precursors to disruptive behavior in toddlers (N=93) was tested. Exposed toddlers demonstrated atypical behavioral patterns, including (1) escalating externalizing problems from 18 to 24 months and (2) observed difficulty modulating behavior in response to social cues. Specification of exposure-related behaviors is a first step toward generating testable hypotheses about putative mechanisms of effect. While it remains unclear whether prenatal exposure plays an etiologic role in the emergence of disruptive behavior, atypical exposure-related behavioral patterns are evident in the first years of life and demonstrate developmental coherence.

Attention Deficit and Disruptive Behavior Disorder↗