Individuals with autism spectrum disorders and those with Williams syndrome often have impairments in social behaviors. These two neurodevelopmental disorders are often reputed to be on the opposite ends of the social spectrum, with autistic individuals being socially avoidant and those with Williams syndrome highly social. Most research on children with autism and Williams syndrome has focused on preschool and younger school-age children. The current study assessed school-age children between the ages of 7-14 years with high-functioning autism, Williams syndrome, and neurotypical developing peers. Parents completed the Salk Institute Sociability Questionnaire and the Social Responsiveness Scale, to provide unique insights into social functioning and tap into different behavioral areas, social approach behaviors, and social responsiveness. This study provides additional evidence that young children with autism and Williams syndrome continue to show divergent social-behavioral tendencies at school-age, despite controlling for age and intellect. Results of this study better elucidate disparities as well as commonalities across school-age children with neurodevelopmental disorders and their typically developing peers, providing insight into everyday social functioning.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1110449.].

Language acquisition is influenced by the quality and quantity of input that language learners receive. In particular, early language development has been said to rely on the acoustic speech stream, as well as on language-related visual information, such as the cues provided by the mouth of interlocutors. Furthermore, children\'s expressive language skills are also influenced by the variability of interlocutors that provided the input. The COVID-19 pandemic has offered an unprecedented opportunity to explore the way these input factors affect language development. On the one hand, the pervasive use of masks diminishes the quality of speech, while it also reduces visual cues to language. On the other hand, lockdowns and restrictions regarding social gatherings have considerably limited the amount of interlocutor variability in children\'s input. The present study aims at analyzing the effects of the pandemic measures against COVID-19 on early language development. To this end, 41 children born in 2019 and 2020 were compared with 41 children born before 2012 using the Catalan adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MB-CDIs). Results do not show significant differences in vocabulary between pre- and post-Covid children, although there is a tendency for children with lower vocabulary levels to be in the post-Covid group. Furthermore, a relationship was found between interlocutor variability and participants\' vocabulary, indicating that those participants with fewer opportunities for socio-communicative diversity showed lower expressive vocabulary scores. These results reinforce other recent findings regarding input factors and their impact on early language learning.

UNASSIGNED: Very and extremely preterm children have been found to show delays in the development of language in early years. In some investigations, however, a rigorous control of biomedical complications, such as Periventricular Leukomalacia (PVL), Intraventricular Hemorrhage (IVH) or Bronchopulmonary Dysplasia (BPD), does not always exist. For that reason, a confounding effect of low gestational age and biomedical complications may lead to erroneous conclusions about the effect of gestational age.
UNASSIGNED: In this investigation we compare language development [use of words, sentence complexity and mean length of the three longest utterances (MLU3)] of three groups of Chilean children at 24 months of age (corrected age for preterm children). The first group was composed of 42 healthy full-term children (Full term group: FT), the second group of 60 preterm children born below 32 gestational weeks without medical complications (low risk preterm group: LRPT), and the third group was composed of 64 children below 32 gestational weeks who had medical complications (High risk preterm group: HRPT). The three groups were similar in terms of gender distribution, maternal education, and socio-economic environment. The instrument used to assess language was the Communicative Development Inventories (CDI). In addition, the Ages and Stages Questionnaire-3 (ASQ-3) was also used to assess other developmental dimensions.
UNASSIGNED: The results indicate that HRPT and LRPT children obtained significantly lower results than the FT group in the three language measures obtained through the CDI. No significant differences were observed between the HRPT and the LRPT groups, although the HRPT obtained the lowest results in the three CDI measures. The results obtained through the administration of the ASQ-3 confirm the delay of both preterm groups in communicative development when compared to the FT group. No significant differences between the FT and the PT groups were observed in gross motor, fine motor and problem solving dimensions of the ASQ-3. The LRPT group obtained results that were significantly higher than those of the FT group and the HRPT group in gross motor development.
UNASSIGNED: These results seem to indicate that the area of language development is particularly influenced by very or extremely low gestational age.

UNASSIGNED: The underdiagnosis of developmental language disorder (DLD) in children is a serious problem in developing countries with limited resources. It has long been noted that the concerns parents have about their children\'s health and development are richly informative, and if this information can be used for diagnosis, it may provide a means to address the problem of underdiagnosis of DLD. This study aimed to quantify the utility of parental linguistic concern questions (PLCQ) on the identification of language disorders in monolingual Spanish-speaking children in Mexico. It also explored whether a combination of biological and environmental conditions questions (BECQ) might improve the performance of a screening test to identify DLD.
UNASSIGNED: A total of 680 monolingual Mexican Spanish-speaking children and their parents from urban areas in Mexico participated in the study. The distribution of responses to questions about DLD concerns was compared between 185 children diagnosed with DLD and 495 control subjects, and multiple logistic regression analysis was performed to select questions with high predictivity, based on the Akaike information criterion. The diagnostic utility of the questions was assessed by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves, stratum-specific likelihood ratios (SSLRs), and changes in pretest and post-test probabilities of DLD. A similar procedure was used to explore whether adding BECQ would improve the diagnostic utility of questions about DLD concerns using data of 128 children.
UNASSIGNED: Four questions regarding parental linguistic concerns were found to be useful in identifying children with DLD. When all four concerns were present, the SSLR was 8.79, while it was only 0.27 when there were no concerns at all. The estimates of DLD probability increased from 0.12 to 0.55 at pretest and post-test. On the other hand, the BECQ did not perform as well as the PLCQ in identifying DLD, and the improvement in diagnostic performance it provided was limited to one question.
UNASSIGNED: The parental questionnaire can be used as a screening tool to help in identifying children with DLD. The data presented in this study underscore the importance of considering linguistic parental concerns as part of the screening process. This is a realistic option to provide a solution to the current problem of underdiagnosis of DLD in Mexico.

22q11.2 deletion (22q11.2DS) and 22q11.2 duplication (22q11.2Dup) confer risk for neurodevelopmental difficulties, but the characterization of speech-language and social skills in 22q11.2Dup is still limited. Therefore, this study aims to delineate social-communicative skills in school-aged children with 22q11.2Dup (n = 19) compared to their non-carrier siblings (n = 11) and age-matched children with 22q11.2DS (n = 19). Parents completed two standardized questionnaires: the Children\'s Communication Checklist (CCC-2), screening speech, language, and social skills, and the Social Responsiveness Scales (SRS-2), assessing deficits in social behavior. Parents report that both children with 22q11.2Dup and 22q11.2DS show more social-communicative deficits than the general population; children with 22q11.2Dup seem to take an intermediate position between their siblings and children with 22q11.2DS. Compared to 22q11.2DS, they demonstrate less frequent and less severe problems, and more heterogeneous social-communicative profiles, with fewer restricted interests and repetitive behaviors. In siblings of 22q11Dup, milder social-communicative difficulties and equally heterogeneous profiles are reported, which might indicate that-in addition to the duplication-other factors such as the broader genetic context play a role in social-communicative outcomes.

We assessed different aspects of tactile perception in young children (3-6 years) with autism. Autistic and neurotypical children completed vibrotactile tasks assessing reaction time, amplitude discrimination (sequential and simultaneous) and temporal discrimination (temporal order judgment and duration discrimination). Autistic children had elevated and more variable reaction times, suggesting slower perceptual-motor processing speed and/or greater distractibility. Children with autism also showed higher amplitude discrimination and temporal order judgement thresholds compared to neurotypical children. Tactile perceptual metrics did not associate with social or tactile sensitivities measured by parent-reports. Altered tactile behavioral responses appear in early childhood, can be quantified but appear dissociated from sensitivity. This implies these measures are complementary, but not necessarily related, phenomena of atypical tactile perception in autism.

KCNB1 encephalopathy encompasses a broad phenotypic spectrum associating intellectual disability, behavioral disturbances, and epilepsies of various severity. Using standardized parental questionnaires, we aimed to capture the heterogeneity of the adaptive and behavioral features in a series of patients with KCNB1 pathogenic variants.
We included 25 patients with a KCNB1 encephalopathy, aged from 3.2 to 34.1 years (median = 10 years). Adaptive functioning was assessed in all patients using the French version of the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales, Second Edition (VABS-II) questionnaire. We screened global behavior with the Childhood Behavioral Check-List (CBCL, Achenbach) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) with the Social Communication Questionnaire (SCQ). We used a cluster analysis to identify subgroups of adaptive profiles.
VABS-II questionnaire showed pathological adaptive behavior in all participants with a severity of adaptive deficiency ranging from mild in 8/20 to severe in 7/20. Eight out of 16 were at risk of Attention Problems at the CBCL and 13/18 were at risk of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The adaptive behavior composite score significantly decreased with age (Spearman\'s Rho=-0.72, p<0.001) but not the equivalent ages, suggesting stagnation and slowing but no regression over time. The clustering analysis identified two subgroups of patients, one showing more severe adaptive behavior. The severity of the epilepsy phenotype predicted the severity of the behavioral profile with a sensitivity of 70% and a specificity of 90.9%.
This study confirms the deleterious consequences of early-onset epilepsy in addition to the impact of the gene dysfunction in patients with KCNB1 encephalopathy. ASD and attention disorders are frequent. Parental questionnaires should be considered as useful tools for early screening and care adaptation.

This study investigates the use of a parental questionnaire to determine its effectiveness as a screening tool in identifying speech-language and/or auditory impairments in children.
Parents completed speech-language (n = 36) or audiology (n = 23) questionnaires prior to their child\'s speech-language and/or auditory evaluations. The speech-language and audiology evaluations were conducted by clinicians at three different universities not familiar with the administration and scoring of the parental questionnaires. A research assistant coded the results of the speech-language and audiology evaluations. Statistical analysis was used to determine if any aspects of the parents\' evaluation of their child\'s speech, language, or hearing correlated with the speech-language pathologists\'/audiologists\' assessment. The results of the analyses would indicate whether parental reports are a reliable alternative to professionals\' assessment.
The speech-language questionnaires for children aged 2-5 years revealed the parents\' perception of their children speaking 3-word sentences significantly (p < 0.05) corresponded to the children\'s comprehension and expression skills. The results from the auditory questionnaires revealed that reports of a child\'s ear pain were (p < 0.05) correlated with auditory dysfunction.
These questionnaires can potentially be used in low-income countries where professional resources are scarce and there are barriers to identifying children with speech-language and/or auditory impairment.

Neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) is an autosomal dominant multisystem disorder, with large inter and intrafamilial clinical variability and uncertain prognosis. In children with NF1 cognitive disorders, learning difficulties and behavioral problems are common. The present study aims to establish the neuropsychological and behavioral profiles of 78 patients with NF1, aged between 5 and 18 years, and to examine the relationship between these profiles and the transmission of NF1 (sporadic vs. familial), clinical manifestations, and environmental factors. We used several questionnaires completed by parents and neuropsychological tests. The results confirmed specific neuropsychological disabilities in children with NF1, especially involving visuospatial and fine motor skills, learning difficulties and behavioral problems. Cognitive difficulties were significantly more frequent in patients with familial than in those with sporadic NF1. All parental questionnaires were correlated with each other, but parental reports were not associated with FSIQ, SES, school status, and clinical manifestations of the disease. Neuropsychological tests were poorly related to parental reports of cognitive and behavioral difficulties.