Search PubMed⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

P Howlin

Publications and source records attributed to P Howlin.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
PubMed1997

Prognosis in autism: do specialist treatments affect long-term outcome?

Many different treatments have been claimed to have a dramatic impact on children with autism. This paper reviews what is known about the outcome in adult life and examines the limitations and advantages of a variety of intervention approaches. It concludes that there is little evidence of any "cure" for autism, but appropriately structured programmes for education and management in the early years can play a significant role in enhancing functioning in later life.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1997

Do individuals with Williams syndrome have bizarre semantics? Evidence for lexical organization using an on-line task.

Williams syndrome, a neurodevelopmental disorder, has attracted a great deal of debate concerning the purported intactness of language in the face of other serious cognitive deficits. As more in-depth studies of specific aspects of WS language have emerged, the notion of a preserved language module has been seriously challenged. Although WS vocabulary scores are often impressive, several investigators have claimed the WS semantics are aberrant. All studies hitherto have been based on off-line experiments which necessarily involve metalinguistic processes. This clearly affects the performance of individuals with cognitive deficits. We report here an on-line study probing the semantic structure of the WS lexicon, using a task-semantic priming-which minimises metalinguistic demands. We show that WS subjects display the same taxonomic/category and thematic/functional priming effects as normal controls. The results are discussed in terms of the differences between receptive and expressive language, as well as the fact that although semantic memory and the automatic access to semantic information for individual words is normal in WS, the integration of semantic information into sentence comprehension may be abnormal. The importance of online tasks to highlight such differences is stressed.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1997

Does teaching theory of mind have an effect on the ability to develop conversation in children with autism?

The present research examined whether teaching children with autism to pass tasks that assess mental state understanding had any positive effects on communication. Two aspects of communication previously shown to be deficient in children with autism were considered. These are conversational ability, in particular the ability to expand on conversation, and the use of mental state terms in speech. Results showed that no discernible improvement was seen on either measure of communication following mental state teaching. Discussion centers on real versus superficial changes in understanding mental states as a result of teaching.

Autistic Disorder↗
PubMed1997

Agenesis of the corpus callosum in Turner syndrome with ring X.

An 8-year-old girl with Turner syndrome and 45,X/46,X,r(X) mosaicism was found to have agenesis of the corpus callosum and various other characteristics including 'kabuki makeup' facial features and mild learning disability. Only two other cases of Turner syndrome associated with agenesis of the corpus callosum have been reported, both in patients with a 45,X karyotype. In both of those patients the constellation of signs differed from those of the present patient in a number of ways. It remains to be confirmed whether there is a higher incidence of CNS malformation in girls who have Turner syndrome with a ring X than has been reported for girls with Turner syndrome in general.

Agenesis of Corpus Callosum↗
PubMed1997

A follow-up study of children attending a primary-age language unit.

Twenty-seven children of normal non-verbal intelligence and a mean age of 8 years, attending a primary-age language unit, were assessed on measures of language, reading and behavioural adjustment. Three and a half years later, when many of the children had reached secondary school age, they were re-assessed using the same measures. Although mean language and reading age scores had improved, they were still well below age level and the gap between chronological age and language and reading ages had increased. There was also some evidence of increasing behavioural and emotional problems. Children who had moved to mainstream education at follow-up had, on average, higher levels of intelligence and significantly higher scores on language and reading tests than the children who had remained in special education. However, even amongst this group many problems persisted, although few pupils received any additional help in dealing with them.

Child↗
PubMed1997

Language and Williams syndrome: how intact is "intact"?

It has been claimed that Williams syndrome (WS), a rare neurodevelopmental disorder, is characterized by serious cognitive deficits alongside intact language. The syndrome is often used as a prime example of the modularity of an innate faculty for morphosyntactic rules. We challenge this claim and hypothesize that morphosyntax, although surprisingly good given WS level of mental retardation, is by no means intact. We make an initial test of this hypothesis through an analysis of the receptive language of a group of English-speaking WS individuals on a standardized morphosyntactic test. We then present an experimental study of expressive language that examines grammatical gender assignment in French-speaking WS patients. Despite a Verbal Mental Age selected to be higher than the chronological age of the young control group, these people with WS continue even in adulthood to show clear-cut deficits in their production of an aspect of morphosyntax that normal children acquire effortlessly very early. The results of the 2 studies, one focusing on receptive language and the other on expressive language, challenge the notion that comprehension and use of morphosyntactic rules in WS individuals are intact. The Within-domain dissociations regarding the use of grammatical gender assignment across several sentence clements and their difficulties in understanding embedded sentences-two quintessentially linguistic skills-suggest that we must rethink the notion of spared, modular, language capacities in Williams syndrome. We conclude that WS language follows a different path to normal acquisition and may turn out to be more like second language learning.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1996

An assessment approach to abuse allegations made through facilitated communication.

Over the last few years a number of cases have been reported in which accusations of sexual abuse have been made through the medium of facilitated communication. Although experimental evaluations of facilitated communication indicate that responses are almost always under the control of the facilitator, not the client, such allegations cannot be ignored. The following case study describes the procedures followed when a young girl with autism began to make accusations of abuse against family members. The paper suggests a number of guidelines that might be followed when professionals are faced with dilemmas of a similar kind.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1996

A longitudinal study of cognitive abilities and educational attainment in Williams syndrome.

The paper reports on changes in IQ scores and in reading, spelling and arithmetic skills over time in 23 young adults with Williams syndrome. They were first assessed in their early to mid-teens and followed up 8 to 9 years later, at an average age of 21 years 9 months. Cognitive assessments indicated increases in Full Scale, Verbal and Performance IQ scores. These increases allow us to conclude that in the case of Williams syndrome (unlike some other conditions) there does not appear to be a decline in the rate of cognitive development over time. Comparisons of Reading, Spelling and Arithmetic scores attained at first and second testing periods revealed only modest increases in reading accuracy and spelling scores, a slight decline in reading comprehension scores, and little change in arithmetic test scores. Differences in the tests used at the two assessment periods do not allow for definitive conclusions to be drawn, but the findings suggest that individuals with Williams syndrome make little progress in their educational skills beyond their early teenage years.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1995

Is it possible to assess the impact of abuse on children with pervasive developmental disorders?

Although it is now recognized that children may exhibit widespread symptoms of stress following exposure to abuse or neglect, the impact of traumatic experiences on children with pervasive developmental disorders has received little attention. The present paper describes a strategy devised to assess the long-term effects of abuse on a group of children who had attended a specialist autistic school where physical and emotional mistreatment of pupils was well documented. Because most of the children had very limited communication skills, the evidence relied heavily on retrospective parental reports. Despite the problems inherent in using such data it was possible to derive reliable measures that could be used to test hypotheses about predicted patterns of behavioral change, based on work with other children who have been abused. In most cases, too, parental reports could be corroborated by information from other sources. Consistent patterns in both the nature and timing of behavioral disturbances were found, which seemed to relate specifically to the period of abuse at the school.

Activities of Daily Living↗
PubMed1995

The recognition of autism in children with Down syndrome--implications for intervention and some speculations about pathology.

Although autism can occur in conjunction with a range of other conditions, the association with Down syndrome is generally considered to be relatively rare. Four young boys with Down syndrome are described who were also autistic. All children clearly fulfilled the diagnostic criteria for autism required by the ICD-10 or DSM-III-R, but in each case the parents had faced considerable difficulties in obtaining this diagnosis. Instead, the children's problems had been attributed to their cognitive delays, despite the fact that their behaviour and general progress differed from other children with Down syndrome in many important aspects. The implications, for both families and children, of the failure to diagnose autism when it co-occurs with other conditions such as Down syndrome are discussed. Some speculations about possible pathological associations are also presented.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1994

The variability of language test scores in 3- and 4-year-old children of normal non-verbal intelligence: a brief research report.

Language testing plays an important role in the identification and monitoring of children with communication difficulties. However, the standardisation of many tests in common use remains far from satisfactory, especially at the lower age ranges. Comparisons between age-equivalent scores and chronological age also raise particular problems. The present paper focuses on the disparity between scores on different tests, in spite of the homogeneity of the group of children studied, and stresses the need for caution in the interpretation of test scores.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMed1993

Behavioural techniques to reduce self-injurious behaviour in children with autism.

This paper is part of a special section on 'self-injurious behaviour and autism' and concentrates on behavioural treatment techniques available and useful to reduce self-injurious behaviour in children with autism (e.g. extinction, time-out, differential reinforcement, alternative forms of stimulation, sensory deprivation, physical restraint, crisis management, environmental modifications). It has become increasingly evident that the successful treatment of self-injurious behaviour requires, first, a systematic and detailed (functional) analysis of the variables associated with the behaviour and, second, a hypothesis-testing approach on an individual, naturalistic basis to increase the acquisition of alternative skills and self-control.

Autistic Disorder↗
PubMed1991

Assessing children with language tests--which tests to use?

A group of 28 children attending a unit for children with developmental language disorders was assessed on a battery of cognitive and language tests. No relationship was found between verbal IQ and scores on other language measures. However, although correlations between the specialist language tests used were highly significant, the mean age scores obtained on the different tests were found to vary by as much as 2 years. The implications of these findings for clinical and experimental studies of children with language impairments are discussed.

Child↗
PubMed1989

Mothers' speech to autistic children: a preliminary causal analysis.

Changes over time in the language patterns of autistic children and their parents were examined during the course of a home-based intervention programme. Although the language used by parents to their autistic children was not deficient, language modification procedures were found to lead to rapid changes in the verbal interaction between parents and children. Parents in the non-intervention, control group showed little change in their communication style. In the experimental group, but not in the control group, a close relationship was found between increases in the use of language-eliciting utterances by their mothers and improvements in children's socialized language. The pattern of association between parent and child language suggested that the main effect was of the parent on the child but that the extent of the child's language handicap constrained what could be achieved by treatment.

Autistic Disorder↗
PubMed1989

Recognition and expression of emotional cues by autistic and normal adults.

High-functioning autistic adults were compared with normal adults using a battery of tests devised to assess the recognition and expression of emotional cues in both facial and vocal modalities. The autistic subjects were relatively impaired in both the appreciation and production of emotional expressions. Although no one test provided a clear-cut separation of the groups at the individual level, composite scores did separate the groups quite well. It is suggested that this battery of tasks may have some value in family genetic studies of autism that need to identify subclinical deficits that might be aetiologically linked with autism.

Adult↗