Youth with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) often show reduced post-error slowing (PES) compared to typically developing controls. This finding has been interpreted as evidence that children with ADHD have error recognition and adaptive control impairments. However, several studies report mixed results regarding PES differences in ADHD, and among healthy controls, there is considerable debate about the cognitive-behavioral origin of PES.

We tested competing hypotheses aimed at clarifying whether reduced PES in children with ADHD is due to impaired error detection, deficits in adaptive control, and/or attention orienting to novelty. Children aged 7–11 years with a diagnosis of ADHD (n = 74) and controls (n = 30) completed four laboratory-based computer tasks with variable cognitive loads and error types.

ADHD diagnosis was associated with shorter PES only on a task with high cognitive load and low error-cuing, consistent with impaired error recognition. In contrast, there was no evidence of impaired adaptive control or heightened novelty orienting among children with ADHD.

The cognitive-behavioral origin of PES is multifactorial, but reduced PES among children with an ADHD diagnosis is due to impaired error recognition during cognitively demanding tasks. Behavioral interventions that scaffold error recognition may facilitate improved performance among children with ADHD.

In the absence of a simple validated instrument to screen for cognitive impairment among illiterate Lebanese older adults, the aims of this study were to validate an Arabic version of the Test of Nine Images (A-TNI93) adapted by the Working Group on Dementia at Saint Joseph University: Groupe de Travail sur les Démences de l’Univesité Saint Joseph (GTD-USJ) for illiterate older Lebanese and to establish normative data.

A national population-based sample of 332 community-dwelling illiterate Lebanese aged 55 years and older was administered the A-TNI93 (GTD-USJ) scoring free and overall recall. The sample is part of a larger national sample (1342 participants) used to validate an Arabic version of the Mini-Mental State Examination already reported. Reproducibility, sensitivity, specificity, and area under the curve of the A-TNI93 (GTD-USJ) scoring to detect cognitive impairment according to Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) as the gold standard were measured. Normative data were established among 188 cognitively normal participants.

A threshold score of six on free recall (FR) provided a sensitivity of 66.7% and a specificity of 90.5%. The area under the curve was 0.93. By taking either scores, that is, a FR ≤ 6 or a total recall ≤ 8, the A-TNI93 (GTD-USJ) slightly improved dementia case detection with a sensitivity of 70.8% and a specificity of 88%. Normative data illustrate the distribution of cognitive performance among illiterate older adults.

Compared to the CDR requiring physician’s competence, the A-TNI93 (GTD-USJ) is a valid Arabic adaptation to screen for cognitive impairment among illiterate Lebanese older adults.

Normative neuropsychological data are essential for interpretation of test performance in the context of demographic factors. The Mayo Normative Studies (MNS) aim to provide updated normative data for neuropsychological measures administered in the Mayo Clinic Study of Aging (MCSA), a population-based study of aging that randomly samples residents of Olmsted County, Minnesota, from age- and sex-stratified groups. We examined demographic effects on neuropsychological measures and validated the regression-based norms in comparison to existing normative data developed in a similar sample.

The MNS includes cognitively unimpaired adults ≥30 years of age (n = 4,428) participating in the MCSA. Multivariable linear regressions were used to determine demographic effects on test performance. Regression-based normative formulas were developed by first converting raw scores to normalized scaled scores and then regressing on age, age2, sex, and education. Total and sex-stratified base rates of low scores (T < 40) were examined in an older adult validation sample and compared with Mayo’s Older Americans Normative Studies (MOANS) norms.

Independent linear regressions revealed variable patterns of linear and/or quadratic effects of age (r2 = 6–27% variance explained), sex (0–13%), and education (2–10%) across measures. MNS norms improved base rates of low performance in the older adult validation sample overall and in sex-specific patterns relative to MOANS.

Our results demonstrate the need for updated norms that consider complex demographic associations on test performance and that specifically exclude participants with mild cognitive impairment from the normative sample.

In the present study, we explored numerical problems in individuals with aphasia. We investigate whether numerical deficits, usually accompanying aphasia, can be observed on number comprehension tasks that do not necessarily require an oral response.

Individuals with aphasia were classified into anterior, posterior, and global subgroups according to the lesion type. To investigate numerical cognition, we used a relatively recent tool, the Numerical Activities of Daily Living (NADL).

The results showed that individuals with aphasia have problems with tasks of basic number comprehension as well as in most NADL. In the formal part of the NADL, anterior aphasic patients made comparatively more errors than the posterior aphasic patients. Global aphasic patients presented an invariably poor performance on almost all tasks.

The results provide insight into how numerical deficits may impair an individual with aphasia in activities of daily living. This study is a preliminary attempt to start the validation process of the NADL for the Greek population.

The ability to recognize others’ emotions is a central aspect of socioemotional functioning. Emotion recognition impairments are well documented in Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, but it is less understood whether they are also present in mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Results on facial emotion recognition are mixed, and crucially, it remains unclear whether the potential impairments are specific to faces or extend across sensory modalities,

In the current study, 32 MCI patients and 33 cognitively intact controls completed a comprehensive neuropsychological assessment and two forced-choice emotion recognition tasks, including visual and auditory stimuli. The emotion recognition tasks required participants to categorize emotions in facial expressions and in nonverbal vocalizations (e.g., laughter, crying) expressing neutrality, anger, disgust, fear, happiness, pleasure, surprise, or sadness.

MCI patients performed worse than controls for both facial expressions and vocalizations. The effect was large, similar across tasks and individual emotions, and it was not explained by sensory losses or affective symptomatology. Emotion recognition impairments were more pronounced among patients with lower global cognitive performance, but they did not correlate with the ability to perform activities of daily living.

These findings indicate that MCI is associated with emotion recognition difficulties and that such difficulties extend beyond vision, plausibly reflecting a failure at supramodal levels of emotional processing. This highlights the importance of considering emotion recognition abilities as part of standard neuropsychological testing in MCI, and as a target of interventions aimed at improving social cognition in these patients.

The Mayo Normative Studies (MNS) represents a robust dataset that provides demographically corrected norms for the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test. We report MNS application to an independent cohort to evaluate whether MNS norms accurately adjust for age, sex, and education differences in subjects from a different geographic region of the country. As secondary goals, we examined item-level patterns, recognition benefit compared to delayed free recall, and derived Auditory Verbal Learning Test (AVLT) confidence intervals (CIs) to facilitate clinical performance characterization.

Participants from the Emory Healthy Brain Study (463 women, 200 men) who were administered the AVLT were analyzed to demonstrate expected demographic group differences. AVLT scores were transformed using MNS normative correction to characterize the success of MNS demographic adjustment.

Expected demographic effects were observed across all primary raw AVLT scores. Depending on sample size, MNS normative adjustment either eliminated or minimized all observed statistically significant AVLT differences. Estimated CIs yielded broad CI ranges exceeding the standard deviation of each measure. The recognition performance benefit across age ranged from 2.7 words (SD = 2.3) in the 50–54-year-old group to 4.7 words (SD = 2.7) in the 70–75-year-old group.

These findings demonstrate generalizability of MNS normative correction to an independent sample from a different geographic region, with demographic adjusted performance differences close to overall performance levels near the expected value of T = 50. A large recognition performance benefit is commonly observed in the normal aging process and by itself does not necessarily suggest a pathological retrieval deficit.

The present study examined the differential effect of the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) Val66Met polymorphism on neuropsychological functioning in children with traumatic brain injury (TBI) relative to orthopedic injury (OI).

Participants were drawn from a prospective, longitudinal study of children who sustained a TBI (n = 69) or OI (n = 72) between 3 and 7 years of age. Children completed a battery of neuropsychological measures targeting attention, memory, and executive functions at four timepoints spanning the immediate post-acute period to 18 months post-injury. Children also completed a comparable age-appropriate battery of measures approximately 7 years post-injury. Parents rated children’s dysexecutive behaviors at all timepoints.

Longitudinal mixed models revealed a significant allele status × injury group interaction with a medium effect size for verbal fluency. Cross-sectional models at 7 years post-injury revealed non-significant but medium effect sizes for the allele status x injury group interaction for fluid reasoning and immediate and delayed verbal memory. Post hoc stratified analyses revealed a consistent pattern of poorer neuropsychological functioning in Met carriers relative to Val/Val homozygotes in the TBI group, with small effect sizes; the opposite trend or no appreciable effect was observed in the OI group.

The results suggest a differential effect of the BDNF Val66Met polymorphism on verbal fluency, and possibly fluid reasoning and immediate and delayed verbal memory, in children with early TBI relative to OI. The Met allele—associated with reduced activity-dependent secretion of BDNF—may confer risk for poorer neuropsychological functioning in children with TBI.

Meta-tasking (MT) is an aspect of executive functioning (EF) that involves the ability to branch (i.e., to apply “if-then” rules) and to effectively interleave sub-goals of one task with sub-goals of another task. As such, MT is crucial for successful planning, coordination, and execution of multiple complex tasks in daily life. Traditional tests of EF fail to adequately measure MT. This study examined whether Condition 4 of the Color-Word Interference Test (CWIT-4; the inhibition/switching condition that requires branching) predicted MT beyond Condition 3 (CWIT-3; inhibition-only condition) and beyond other subtests from the Delis–Kaplan Executive Function System (D-KEFS) that have a switching condition.

Ninety-eight non-Hispanic white community-dwelling older adults completed the first four subtests of the D-KEFS and an ecologically valid measure of MT.

Time to completion and total errors on CWIT-4 accounted for variance in MT above and beyond CWIT-3 and beyond the switching conditions of other D-KEFS subtests. Results remained virtually unchanged when controlling for demographics and general cognitive status.

Among older adults, CWIT-4 is more strongly associated with MT than other D-KFES tasks. Future research should examine whether CWIT-4 relates to lapses in instrumental activities of daily living among older adults above and beyond other EF tests.

Older adults with exceptional memory function, designated “SuperAgers,” include individuals over age 80, with episodic memory at least as good as individuals ages 50s–60s. The Northwestern University SuperAging cohort is defined by performance on an established test of verbal memory. The purpose of this study was to determine if superior verbal memory extends to nonverbal memory in SuperAgers by examining differences in the National Institutes of Health Toolbox® (NIHTB) between older adults with exceptional memory and those with average-for-age cognition.

SuperAgers (n = 46) and cognitively average-for-age older adults (n = 31) completed a comprehensive neuropsychological battery and the NIHTB Cognition module. Multiple linear regressions were used to examine differences on subtests between groups.

There was a significant effect of group on the Picture Sequence Memory score, (p = .007), such that SuperAgers had higher scores than cognitively average-for-age older adults. There were no other group effects across other non-episodic memory NIHTB Cognition measures.

Findings from this study demonstrated stronger performance on the memory measure of the NIHTB in SuperAgers compared to cognitively average-for-age older adults demonstrating superior memory in not only verbal but also nonverbal episodic memory in this group. Additionally, this study adds to the literature validating the NIHTB in older adults, particularly in a novel population of adults over age 80 with exceptional memory.

To evaluate whether customary consumption of cannabis or cannabis dependence impacts the alerting, orienting, and executive control systems in young adults; to find out whether it is related to tobacco or alcohol dependence and if cannabis use characteristics are associated with the attention network systems.

One-hundred and fifty-four healthy adults and 102 cannabis users performed the Attention Network Test (ANT) to evaluate the alerting, orienting, and executive control systems.

Cannabis use enhanced the alerting system but decreased the orienting system. Moreover, those effects seem to be associated with cannabis dependence. Out of all the cannabis-using variables, only the age of onset of cannabis use significantly predicted the efficiency of the orienting and executive control systems.

Cannabis dependence favors tonic alertness but reduces selective attention ability; earlier use of cannabis worsens the efficiency of selective attention and resolution of conflicts.

The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated gender disparities in some academic disciplines. This study examined the association of the pandemic with gender authorship disparities in clinical neuropsychology (CN) journals.

Author bylines of 1,018 initial manuscript submissions to four major CN journals from March 15 through September 15 of both 2019 and 2020 were coded for binary gender. Additionally, authorship of 40 articles published on pandemic-related topics (COVID-19, teleneuropsychology) across nine CN journals were coded for binary gender.

Initial submissions to these four CN journals increased during the pandemic (+27.2%), with comparable increases in total number of authors coded as either women (+23.0%) or men (+25.4%). Neither the average percentage of women on manuscript bylines nor the proportion of women who were lead and/or corresponding authors differed significantly across time. Moreover, the representation of women as authors of pandemic-related articles did not differ from expected frequencies in the field.

Findings suggest that representation of women as authors of peer-reviewed manuscript submissions to some CN journals did not change during the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Future studies might examine how risk and protective factors may have influenced individual differences in scientific productivity during the pandemic.

The neural mechanisms contributing to the social problems of pediatric brain tumor survivors (PBTS) are unknown. Face processing is important to social communication, social behavior, and peer acceptance. Research with other populations with social difficulties, namely autism spectrum disorder, suggests atypical brain activation in areas important for face processing. This case-controlled functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study compared brain activation during face processing in PBTS and typically developing (TD) youth.

Participants included 36 age-, gender-, and IQ-matched youth (N = 18 per group). PBTS were at least 5 years from diagnosis and 2 years from the completion of tumor therapy. fMRI data were acquired during a face identity task and a control condition. Groups were compared on activation magnitude within the fusiform gyrus for the faces condition compared to the control condition. Correlational analyses evaluated associations between neuroimaging metrics and indices of social behavior for PBTS participants.

Both groups demonstrated face-specific activation within the social brain for the faces condition compared to the control condition. PBTS showed significantly decreased activation for faces in the medial portions of the fusiform gyrus bilaterally compared to TD youth, ps ≤ .004. Higher peak activity in the left fusiform gyrus was associated with better socialization (r = .53, p < .05).

This study offers initial evidence of atypical activation in a key face processing area in PBTS. Such atypical activation may underlie some of the social difficulties of PBTS. Social cognitive neuroscience methodologies may elucidate the neurobiological bases for PBTS social behavior.