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Query: UMLS:C0917816 (mental retardation)
 15,867 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Describes the development and validation of the Developmental Behavior Checklist (DBC), a standardized instrument completed by lay informants to assess behavioral and emotional disturbance in children and adolescents with mental retardation (MR). Items describing common behavioral and emotional problems in this population were generated by extracting descriptions from 664 case files of children and adolescents with behavior disorders seen at a specialist developmental assessment service over 12 years. These items were reduced to a set of 96 items administered to a sample of 1,093 children and adolescents with mental retardation and then submitted to a principal components analysis. Six interpretable and partly validated subscales were obtained which explained 36% of the total variance and had satisfactory internal consistency. Interrater and test-retest agreement were satisfactory for both total scale score and for scores on each of the subscales. Good evidence of concurrent validity was provided by substantial positive correlations between total scores on the DBC completed by lay informants and the ratings of experienced psychiatrists based upon interviews and scores on two standardized instruments that must be completed by health professionals. The discriminative validity of the total score as assessed by area under the ROC curve was excellent (92%). Standardized norms for the DBC are derived from an epidemiological study of behavior problems in children and adolescents with mental retardation undertaken in two Australian States. Norms are available for the mild, moderate, severe, and profound MR groups and for the MR population as a whole.
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PMID:The Developmental Behavior Checklist: the development and validation of an instrument to assess behavioral and emotional disturbance in children and adolescents with mental retardation. 755 89

Malformations of the cerebral cortex are recognized as a common cause of developmental delay, neurological deficits, mental retardation and epilepsy. Currently, the diagnosis of cerebral cortical malformations is based on a subjective interpretation of neuroimaging characteristics of the cerebral gray matter and underlying white matter. There is no automated system for aiding the observer in making the diagnosis of a cortical malformation. In this paper a fuzzy rule-based system is proposed as a solution for this problem. The system collects the available expert knowledge about cortical malformations and assists the medical observer in arriving at a correct diagnosis. Moreover, the system allows the study of the influence of the various factors that take part in the decision. The evaluation of the system has been carried out by comparing the automated diagnostic algorithm with known case examples of various malformations due to abnormal cortical organization. An exhaustive evaluation of the system by comparison with published cases and a ROC analysis is presented in the paper.
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PMID:A fuzzy system for helping medical diagnosis of malformations of cortical development. 1719 47

Most of the children having Specific Language Impairment (SLI) exhibit pragmatic difficulties that are often overlooked while their communication skills are being evaluated. Identifying pragmatic needs in such children can be lengthy and indeterminate as many of such children don't quite "fit" into a definite diagnostic category. This study aimed at identifying and clarifying the nature of pragmatic difficulties in a group of children with Specific Language Impairment by comparing their pragmatic skills with those of a group of normally developing children using a simple Pragmatic Screening protocol hoping that this would aid in reaching a better understanding of the nature of pragmatic difficulties in such children. The present study examined the pragmatic profiles of 60 age and gender matched native Cairo-Egyptian Arabic speaking children (with age range 4-6 years old). The children were divided into two groups; Group A and Group B. Group A included 30 children with normal language development whereas Group B included 30 children who had been previously diagnosed as having Specific Language Impairment. For each subject, history taking followed by audiological and psychometric evaluation to rule out the existence of any hearing difficulties or mental deficiency was performed. Afterwards, each child under study was subjected to the Arabic Pragmatic Screening tool [1]. For each child, the screening was scored by three readers; average scores were obtained and statistically analyzed. All the values obtained by the control group were found to be significantly higher than those obtained by the SLI group except for some non-verbal paralinguistic skills where non-significant differences were found between the two groups. Through the ROC curve, cut off level for Total Pragmatic Score (TPS) was found to be less than or equal to 78.16, i.e. 4-6 year old children with a TPS equal to or less than 78.16 were considered to have pragmatic difficulties. Thorough screening of pragmatic skills while evaluating the communication skills of children with specific Language Impairment should be seriously considered.
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PMID:Pragmatic difficulties in children with Specific Language Impairment. 2110 58