Behavioral - Learning Disorders

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Oppositional Defiant Disorders

NIH - Medical Encyclopedia Oppositional Defiant Disorder "Oppositional defiant disorder is a pattern of disobedient, hostile, and defiant behavior toward authority figures. To fit this diagnosis, the pattern must persist for at least 6 months and must go beyond the bounds of normal childhood misbehavior.

Symptoms: • Arguing with adults • Loss of temper • Angry and resentful of others • Actively defies adults' requests • Spiteful or vindictive behavior • Blames others for own mistakes • Is touchy or easily annoyed • Few or no friends or loss of previous friends • Constant trouble in school ...

Possible Complications: In a significant proportion of cases, the adult condition of conduct disorder can be traced back to the presence of oppositional defiant disorder in childhood ...

Prevention: Consistency in rules and fair consequences should be practiced in the child's home. Punishments should not be overly harsh or inconsistently applied. Appropriate behaviors should be modeled by the adults in the household. Abuse and neglect increase the chances that this condition will occur. "

Highlighted Articles

Oppositional defiant disorder. (Aust Fam Physician. 2008) “DISCUSSION: Many of the behaviours required to meet this diagnosis are not uncommon in the preschool child or adolescent. However, in children with ODD the behaviours are persistent, cause significant distress to the family system, and impact on the child's social and educational functioning. Oppositional defiant disorder usually presents in the preschool years, although it may become evident during adolescence. There is strong evidence that early intervention to increase positive factors in family relationships and to increase both the parents' and child's skill levels can assist in the prevention of more serious disorders and mental health issues.”

Lifetime prevalence, correlates, and persistence of oppositional defiant disorder: results from the National Comorbidity Survey Replication. (J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2007) "Results: Lifetime prevalence of ODD is estimated to be 10.2% (males = 11.2%; females = 9.2%). Of those with lifetime ODD, 92.4% meet criteria for at least one other lifetime DSM-IV disorder, including: mood (45.8%), anxiety (62.3%), impulse-control (68.2%), and substance use (47.2%) disorders. ODD is temporally primary in the vast majority of cases for most comorbid disorders. Both active and remitted ODD significantly predict subsequent onset of secondary disorders even after controlling for comorbid conduct disorder (CD). Early onset (before age 8) and comorbidity predict slow speed of recovery of ODD. Conclusions: ODD is a common child- and adolescent-onset disorder associated with substantial risk of secondary mood, anxiety, impulse-control, and substance use disorders. These results support the study of ODD as a distinct disorder."

Conduct Disorders

NIH - Medical Encyclopedia Conduct Disorder "Conduct disorder, a disorder of childhood and adolescence, involves chronic behavior problems, such as defiant, impulsive, or antisocial behavior; drug use; or criminal activity.

Causes: Conduct disorder has been associated with family conflicts, child abuse, poverty, genetic defects, and parental drug addiction or alcoholism. The diagnosis is more common among boys and is estimated to be as high as 10%. However, because many of the qualities necessary to make the diagnosis (such as "defiance" and "rule breaking") can be subjective, it is hard to know how common the disorder really is. For accurate diagnosis, the behavior must be far more extreme than simple adolescent rebellion or boyish exuberance. Conduct disorder is often associated with attention-deficit disorder, and the two together carry a major risk for alcohol and/or other drug dependence. Children with conduct disorder tend to be impulsive, difficult to control, and unconcerned about the feelings of others ...

Symptoms: Cruel or aggressive behavior toward people and animals • Destruction of property, including fire setting • Lying, truancy, running away • Vandalism, theft • Heavy drinking and/or heavy illicit drug use • Breaking rules without apparent reason • Antisocial behaviors, such as bullying and fighting ...

Possible Complications: Children with conduct disorder may go on to develop personality disorders as adults, particularly antisocial personality disorder. As their behaviors worsen, these individuals may also develop significant drug and legal problems.

When to Contact a Medical Professional: See your health care provider if your child seems to be overly aggressive, is bullying others, is being victimized, or continually gets in trouble. Early treatment may help."

Highlighted Articles

A 30-Year Prospective Follow-up Study of Hyperactive Boys With Conduct Problems: Adult Criminality. (J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2007) "CONCLUSIONS: Hyperactive/ADHD boys with conduct problems are at increased risk for adult criminality. Hyperactive boys without childhood conduct problems are not at increased risk for later criminality. An intensive 3-year MMT treatment of 6- to 12-year-old hyperactive boys is insufficient to prevent later adult criminality."

From conduct disorder to severe mental illness: associations with aggressive behaviour, crime and victimization. (Psychol Med. 2007) "CONCLUSIONS: Men and women with severe mental illness who have a history of CD by mid-adolescence are at increased risk for aggressive behaviour and violent crime. These patients are easily identifiable and may benefit from learning-based treatments aimed at reducing antisocial behaviour. Longitudinal, prospective investigations are needed to understand why CD is more common among people with than without schizophrenia."

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Behavioral and Learning Disorders

Learning Disorders

NEWS:

Children's Under-achievement Could Be Down To Poor Working Memory “Children who under-achieve at school may just have poor working memory rather than low intelligence according to researchers who have produced the world's first tool to assess memory capacity in the classroom. The researchers from Durham University, who surveyed over three thousand children, found that ten per cent of school children across all age ranges suffer from poor working memory seriously affecting their learning. … However, the researchers identified that poor working memory is rarely identified by teachers, who often describe children with this problem as inattentive or as having lower levels of intelligence. … Working memory is the ability to hold information in your head and manipulate it mentally. You use this mental workspace when adding up two numbers spoken to you by someone else without being able to use pen and paper or a calculator. Children at school need this memory on a daily basis for a variety of tasks such as following teachers' instructions or remembering sentences they have been asked to write down. … ‘Currently, children are not identified and assessed for working memory within a classroom setting. Early identification of these children will be a major step towards addressing under-achievement. It will mean teachers can adapt their methods to help the children's learning before they fall too far behind their peers.’ “

Even kids born near term may do poorly in school “Babies born just a few weeks too soon are more likely than full-term infants to have difficulties in kindergarten through the fifth grade, a study shows.”

Low Maternal Education Linked To Intellectual Disabilities In Offspring “The authors speculate that in addition to direct genetic effects, prenatally, maternal education may impact cognitive development through awareness and avoidance by the mother of certain risk behaviors and access to early and comprehensive prenatal care. Likewise, the authors theorize that, postnatally, low maternal education can influence mental development of the child through poor nutrition choices by the mother, less cognitive stimulation in the home environment, less knowledge of and access to early intervention services, and increases in childhood injuries.”

Separation From Mom, Dad Linked With Learning Trouble In Kids “ "This study reminds us to treat any sort of separation as a marker for possible psychosocial stress in a family," Jee said. "And intervening early is the best way to minimize long-term educational -- and vocational -- deficits for these children." “

Study Shows Better Parenting Skills Sharpen Minds of Kids in Poverty “Growing up poor has insidious effects on kids' mental abilities, beginning when they are very young. But there is new evidence that parents living in poverty can improve their children's chances for a better life by changing how they relate to them at home. … The parents learned to introduce "predictability where there were power struggles," Stevens says, and they were coached on how to converse with kids, "allowing the child a chance to contribute to and direct that communication experience. … It has been known for a long time that living in poverty damages children's intellectual abilities. Scientists have recently begun to understand why. It's not because of money, per se, and it's most certainly not a matter of being somehow inferior. It's the effect of unending stress and lack of proper social support. At a critical time in early childhood when the brain is developing, stress inhibits the formation of connections between brain cells and restricts blood flow to the brain. … Shonkoff argues that the importance of programs to aid poor children and their parents can't be underestimated because the effects last a lifetime. "The earlier we intervene, the better," Shonkoff says.” “

Working Memory Has Limited 'Slots' “People who can store more information in working memory have higher levels of "fluid intelligence," the ability to solve novel problems, Luck said. Working memory is also important in keeping track of objects that are temporarily blocked from view, and it appears to be used when we need to recognize objects shown in unfamiliar views. Work by Lisa M. Oakes, another psychology professor at UC Davis and colleagues has shown that very young infants have fairly primitive working memory abilities. Between the ages of 6 and 10 months, however, they rapidly develop a much more adult-like working memory system. Outside the visual domain, working memory is used for storing alternatives or intermediate values, for example when adding a string of numbers together, Luck said. It also appears to play an important role in learning new words, perhaps by allowing the sound of a new word to remain active in the listener's brain until a long-term memory of the word can be formed. Luck compared the working memory system to the internal memory registers on a computer chip that allow it to make a series of calculations in between referring to the main memory. Our more familiar long-term memory, in contrast, can be used to store large quantities of information for long periods of time, but it is accessed much more slowly, like a computer's hard drive.“

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JOURNAL ARTICLES:

Association of Black Carbon with Cognition among Children in a Prospective Birth Cohort Study (American Journal of Epidemiology 2008) “It is well documented that air pollution is associated with a number of adverse respiratory and cardiovascular health effects (1–3). Many of these effects seem to be more strongly associated with particles from traffic (1), which are rich in elemental carbon and are the principal source of ultrafine particle exposure. However, the possible neurodegenerative effect of air pollution remains largely unexplored. The potential effect of translocation of particles from the lung to other organs has been documented. Researchers have shown that ultrafine and fine particles can be translocated from the lungs when they penetrate pulmonary tissue and enter the capillaries, reaching other organs (i.e., liver, spleen, kidneys, heart, brain) through circulation (4). … In this prospective urban birth cohort study, long-term concentration of black carbon particles from mobile sources was associated with decreases in cognitive test scores, even after adjustment for socioeconomic status, birth weight, tobacco smoke exposure, and blood lead level. Although our linear regression-based analyses do not establish causation, only associations, a number of features strengthen our findings. Decreases in cognitive functioning were seen in verbal and nonverbal intelligence constructs as well as memory constructs”

Learning Disabilities Linked to Primary Progressive Aphasia “Individuals with primary progressive aphasia (PPA) and their first-degree relatives are more likely to have a history of learning disabilities, particularly dyslexia, than patients with other types of dementia or healthy controls.”

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