This study examined the acquisition of Hebrew noun plurals in early immersion and bilingual education by focusing on performance, as well as morpho-syntactic and semantic errors in inflecting nouns. A total of 196 students from Senior Kindergarten (n = 86) and grades 1 (n = 58) and 2 (n = 53) were administered measures of inflectional morphology in Hebrew. Results indicated that children applied high frequency, salient, simple to apply inflectional patterns involving male-female nouns, as well as the basic way of noting plurality. Two major obstacles in the pluralisation of Hebrew nouns were suffix regularity and stem transparency. Error analysis revealed three categories of responses: rule-based, analogy-based and non-strategic errors. The principal conclusion was that errors notwithstanding, young children learning Hebrew as a foreign language are moving toward an understanding of plural formation. The development of morpho-syntactic structures gradually develops over time and with exposure to Hebrew instruction.

The scientific study of wisdom is a contentious field. There is little agreement among dominant research programs concerning how to conceptualize and measure the elusive phenomenon of wisdom. The current study argues for a narrative analysis of this concept given that autobiographical stories offer a contextually rich vista into real-life manifestations of wisdom. Presented here is a qualitative investigation of autobiographical wisdom narratives from 8 individuals distributed across parameters of age, gender, and degree of wisdom. Results point to the possibility that relatively wise persons define wisdom more elaborately, participate in more sophisticated autobiographical reasoning processes, and engage with master narratives in a more evaluative and critical manner than relatively unwise individuals. These features did not appear to differ across levels of age and gender. This study validates a narrative approach to the science of wisdom, and suggests that stories may be central to advancing our understanding of this concept.

Introduction: Little is known about the physical activity [PA] habits of children with Autism Spectrum Disorders [ASD]. ASD specific PA barriers and facilitators have not been investigated. Purpose: To describe the PA habits of children with ASD and the barriers and facilitators to optimal PA participation. Methods: Twenty-three parents of children with ASD reported on their child’s PA habits, perceived barriers to PA participation, and functioning. A rating scale was applied to score responses and children were classified into functional level groups and PA level groups. Results: On average, children were reported to meet or exceeded national PA frequency guidelines, belonged to active families and participated in a variety of physical activities. Parents identified several barriers to optimal PA for their children. Conclusions: Children with ASD can attain optimal PA. Exposure to a variety of PA opportunities and experiences aids in identifying the ideal activity for each individual child.

Children with co-occurring internalizing and externalizing problems (MIXED children) represent a distinct aggressive subtype with negative outcomes; understanding what works for them in treatment is imperative. The success of MIXED children in some family-based programs for aggression may be attributable to collateral reductions in internalizing symptoms. The current study examined whether reductions in internalizing behaviour in MIXED children were due to reductions in maternal depression and parent-child co-rumination. Co-rumination, a dyadic interaction related to internalizing symptoms, is defined as excessively discussing problems and dwelling on negative feelings. We investigated 154 MIXED children and 49 pure externalizers who underwent Parent Management Training/Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. Mother-child co-rumination was assessed using videotaped observations of problem discussions gathered at pre-treatment, post-treatment and follow-up. We hypothesized that, at pre-treatment, mother-child co-rumination would mediate the relation between maternal depression and child internalizing problems. During treatment, we expected that co-rumination and maternal depression would predict reductions in child symptoms. Finally, we hypothesized that reductions in co-rumination would mediate the association between improvements in maternal depression and improvements in child internalizing which would, in turn, impact externalizing outcomes. Results did not support our pre-treatment and during treatment hypotheses about the role of co-rumination as a mediator. At pre-treatment, maternal depression was associated with child internalizing problems and co-rumination; co-rumination was not associated with internalizing when controlling for maternal depression. Reductions in maternal depression were associated with improvements in child internalizing and, marginally, with child externalizing, thus partially supporting our hypotheses. We also found that reductions in co-rumination impacted child externalizing, but not internalizing behaviour, again partially supporting our hypotheses regarding co-rumination changes and child symptom changes. Finally, results demonstrated that internalizing improvements affected externalizing outcomes, partially supporting our treatment-related hypothesis. Findings have implications for understanding the development and treatment of problems in MIXED children.

Social interactions in early life influence the organization of neural and behavioural systems of developing mammalian young. Deprivation of social interactions with the primary caregiver and other immediate conspecifics (early social deprivation) has lasting consequences on behavioural functioning in later life. The purpose of this thesis was to investigate how early social deprivation affects the motivational aspects of behaviour in the context of appetitive stimuli. Rats were reared in complete isolation from the mother and litter using the method of artificial rearing (AR). Control rats were maternally reared (MR). In adulthood, rats were tested in a series of behavioural paradigms designed to assess the motivational impact of primary food reward and reward-related cues on food-seeking behaviour. AR increased the behavioural responsiveness of rats to the motivational impact of reward-related cues, but not to primary rewards themselves. Specifically, there were no significant effects of AR on food consumption or goal-directed instrumental responding for food. However, AR enhanced instrumental responding triggered by a previously conditioned reward cue. AR also increased the expression of approach behaviour towards a localizable conditioned reward cue and instrumental responding when the same cue was used as a reinforcer. An assessment of the mediating factors during development revealed that the lack of tactile stimulation normally received from the mother, but not sustained exposure to the stress hormone corticosterone, contributed to the long-term effects of AR. These findings represent a potential link between early-life social adversity and vulnerability to the development of problems with behavioural inhibition and attention in the presence of appetitive environmental cues.

Prior research has demonstrated that bilinguals outperform monolinguals on tasks requiring set shifting – that is, the ability to shift between different ways of thinking about an object or situation. For example, bilingual children have been shown to outperform monolingual controls on false-belief tasks and on the Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS) task. The present study aimed (a) to examine whether the bilingual advantage in false-belief and DCCS tasks can be replicated when accounting for languages/cultures and socio-economic status and (b) to determine whether inhibitory control, metarepresentation, and/or working memory underlie the advantage, if any exists. Three language groups (24 English monolingual, 24 French monolingual, and 24 English-French bilingual preschoolers) were tested on the following tasks: false-belief (FB) tasks, the DCCS task, an inhibitory control task (Stroop task), a metarepresentation task (Identity Statements task), a working memory task (Backward Word Span), and receptive language proficiency tests. Socio-economic status was measured through a parental questionnaire containing questions about parental income and education. Results showed that the three language groups were equivalent on socio-economic measures. Despite having significantly lower language proficiency scores, bilinguals’ raw scores on FB and DCCS tasks did not differ from monolinguals’ raw scores. After statistically controlling for language proficiency and age, bilinguals had significantly higher FB scores, but did not differ from monolinguals on DCCS scores. Analyses were then performed to determine whether inhibitory control, metarepresentation, and/or working memory help bilinguals “do more” in FB “with less” language proficiency. Working memory emerged as the likely candidate that compensates for the negative effect of bilingual children’s low language proficiency on FB performance because, after controlling for age and language proficiency, it was the only cognitive ability that fulfilled both criteria: (a) its measure correlated significantly with FB and (b) there was a bilingual advantage over both monolingual groups in the measure. A mediation analysis confirmed that the working memory measure significantly mediates the relation between bilingual status and FB while controlling for age and language proficiency. Both components of the working memory measure – that is, understanding of task instructions and maintenance/manipulation capacity – mediate this relation.

Emotion processing involves specialised brain regions allowing for effective evaluation of the social environment and for the acquisition of social skills that emerge over childhood. In humans, an important aspect of normal development is the ability to understand the facial expressions of others that signal the nature and safety of the environment. Existing functional data, however, have not characterised the developmental trajectories associated with the differing neural and cognitive-behavioural development. The current thesis investigates the functional specialisation and development of the spatial and temporal patterns in neural activities during implicit processing of facial emotions from early childhood through adulthood. The first study identified brain regions engaged in implicit processing of emotional expressions using a simple emotion-processing paradigm (target detection task) with fourteen healthy adults using magnetoencephalography (MEG) recordings. Participants responded to a non-face target (a scrambled pattern) while ignoring the emotional face presented in a different hemifield. Results showed ACC and right-lateralised amygdala activations in early latencies in response to the unattended emotional faces related to rapid and implicit attention to the task-irrelevant facial emotions, specifically during the processing of the fearful emotion. Based on the findings in the first study, the second study investigated the developmental patterns and age-related differences in brain activities associated with the rapid and automatic processing of the emotional expressions in MEG with twelve children 7 – 10 years old, twelve adolescents 12 – 15 years old and twelve young adults (mean age 24.4 years) using the same paradigm. The results showed that emotion processing developed early in childhood in the amygdalae, whereas the processing of fear had later maturation engaging the ACC. The results further demonstrated an age-correlated increase in development in ACC activity and an age-related laterality shift in the amygdalae related to fear processing. The present thesis provides new evidence contributing to the understanding of the protracted but differing normal development in the emotional brain over the childhood into adulthood, and offers critical insights into understanding possible dysfunctions of these brain regions during development.

How do infants learn the sounds of their native language? Do they need to use general-auditory or language-specific mechanisms to make sense of the distributional nature of their phonetic input? To answer this question, this study investigated the neural correlates of phonetic discrimination in monolingual and bilingual infants (2-6 and 10-14 months) and adults using a new lens afforded by functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) neuroimaging. All participants heard syllables phonetically contrastive in their native English and Hindi (non-native) in an oddball paradigm while being imaged with fNIRS. Age comparisons of infant brain activation in multiple sites revealed that left Broca‟s area showed a developmental decline in response to native-language experience only. Bilateral STG showed robust recruitment at both ages in response to both stimulus languages. These findings were robust across monolinguals and bilinguals. Together, the results suggest that all infants use neural tissue predisposed for linguistic-phonetic processing in early life.

This study examined written expression skills in children with attention problems with and without word reading difficulties. The sample consisted of 28 children with attention problems (AP) only, 18 children with coexisting attention and reading problems (ARP), and 34 children without attention or word reading difficulties (TYP). Curriculum-based measurement (CBM) indices of accuracy and fluency, plus teacher ratings of handwriting, spelling, and overall writing skills were used to assess children’s written expression skills. The analyses indicated that the AP and ARP groups received significantly lower scores on all measures of written expression than the TYP group. The ARP group scored significantly lower than the AP group on the teacher ratings of writing and spelling. These findings suggest that inattention is significantly related to written expression difficulties independent of word-reading skills.

Purpose: To examine the social competence of childhood brain tumour survivors in the context of a group social skills intervention program developed to address documented social deficits among this population and to expand outcomes obtained from a feasibility study, by: conceptualizing social competence as three separate but interrelated constructs including social adjustment, social performance, and social skills; incorporating a control group; eliciting teacher responses; and examining sense of self. Methods: Participants were 23 survivors (10 males; 13 females) aged 7 to 15 years and comprised an intervention (n=15) and control group (n=8). The intervention consisted of 8 2-hour weekly sessions focused on social skills including friendship making. At the level of social adjustment, intervention participants, controls, parents, and teachers (n=6) completed standardized measures of social adjustment including: social skills (SSRS, Gresham & Elliott, 1990); social functioning (Varni, 1999); and social problems (Achenbach, 2001). At the level of social performance, behavioural observations were conducted on intervention participants. At the level of social skills, intervention participants responded to the Social Problem-Solving Measure (SPSM; Vannatta, 1993). Survivors also completed standardized sense of self measures. Results: Outcomes related to social adjustment showed a significant increase from Time 1 to Time 2 for parent reported SSRS within and between groups. Significant improvements were also found for parent reported social problems between groups. Child reported social problems decreased within groups and a borderline effect was found between groups. Teachers reported improved SSRS scores form Time 1 to Time 2. For social performance, significant increases in frequency were found for maintaining facial attention and social conversations with peers over the course of the intervention. At the level of social skills, a borderline significant increase was found for quantity of strategies offered from Time 1 to Time 2. No significant findings were found for sense of self data. Conclusions: Improvements after intervention were noted at each level of social competence, but primarily at the level of social adjustment. Control group and teacher outcomes strengthen findings. This is the first study to explore varying levels of social competence and provides important insight into the source of survivors’ social deficits.