Becker, Angelika

After pediatric stroke, children often exhibit impairments in their cognitive, language, and behavioral development. This study investigates the relationship between language abilities and behavioral problems in preschool children (n = 56) following pediatric stroke, focusing on age at the time of testing, sex, time of stroke, left middle cerebral artery involvement, and cognitive abilities. About one-third of the children showed below-average language development and overall behavior problems. Binomial logistic regressions revealed that sentence comprehension had a protective effect (OR = 0.707) on overall behavioral problems. The regression model for externalizing problems was not significant or externalizing problems was not significant. The results highlight the importance of language comprehension skills in preventing mental health problems in this clinical group.

Measurement invariance of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, Fifth Edition (WISC-V) 10-primary subtest battery was analyzed across a group of children and adolescents with ADHD (n = 91) and a control group (n = 91) matched by sex, age, migration background, and parental education or type of school. First, confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) were performed to establish the model fit for the WISC-V second-order five-factor model in each group. A sufficiently good fit of the model was found for the data in both groups. Subsequently, multigroup confirmatory factor analyses (MGCFAs) were conducted to test for measurement invariance across the ADHD and control group. Results of these analyses indicated configural and metric invariance but did not support full scalar invariance. However, after relaxing equality constraints on the Vocabulary (VC), Digit Span (DS), Coding (CD), Symbol Search (SS), and Picture Span (PS) subtest intercepts as well as on the intercepts of the first-order factors Working Memory (WM) and Processing Speed (PS), partial scalar invariance could be obtained. Furthermore, model-based reliability coefficients indicated that the WISC-V provides a more precise measurement of general intelligence (e.g., represented by the Full-Scale IQ, FSIQ) than it does for cognitive subdomains (e.g., represented by the WISC-V indexes). Group comparisons revealed that the ADHD group scored significantly lower than the control group on four primary subtests, thus achieving significantly lower scores on the corresponding primary indexes and the FSIQ. Given that measurement invariance across the ADHD and the control group could not be fully confirmed for the German WISC-V, clinical interpretations based on the WISC-V primary indexes are limited and should only be made with great caution regarding the cognitive profiles of children and adolescents with ADHD.

The prevalence of substance abuse is high during adolescence, and several studies have linked the use of alcohol and cannabis in adolescence to different cognitive impairments. To investigate whether specific cognitive deficits can be observed in adolescents with substance use disorder (SUD), we compared the cognitive profiles of inpatient adolescents diagnosed with SUD to a control group matched for sex, age and educational status. The inpatient adolescents received diagnoses of cannabis use disorder, alcohol use disorder or both. We compared the WISC-V profiles of 22 inpatients (45.5% female, Mage: 14.5; SD: 0.8) and the WAIS-IV profiles of 27 inpatients (44.4% female, Mage: 17.1; SD: 0.9) to 49 matched control participants with no diagnosed SUD. At the time of testing, participants were hospitalized for treatment of their SUD and were abstinent for a period of at least 6 weeks. To gain greater power, we jointly analyzed the Verbal Comprehension Index, Working Memory Index, Processing Speed Index and Full Scale IQ as assessed by WISC-V and WAIS-IV. The clinical group performed significantly worse than the control group on all the above indices. When only the group of inpatients was observed, in a model with the factors sex, educational status, presence of a comorbid diagnosis of depression and the number of comorbid diagnoses, only the factor educational status was significantly associated with the Full Scale IQ, whereas the factors sex and a comorbid diagnosis of depression in this group were associated with the Processing Speed Index. The results show that adolescents diagnosed with SUD (cannabis and/or alcohol) display broad cognitive impairments after 6 weeks of abstinence. Future research is required to further explore the role of comorbid diagnoses.