NACD Science Corner
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Science Corner Vol. 7 – Sleep Apnea and Its Association to Behavior, Learning Problems and ADHD

  The Tucson Children’s Assessment of Sleep Apnea Study was published this year in the journal SLEEP [1]. In this study of 263 youth, sleep study and neurobehavioral data was collected twice, five years apart. Twenty-one of the children had persistent sleep apnea throughout the entire study. These children were six times more likely to…

NACD Science Corner
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Science Corner Vol. 6 – Optimal Outcome for a Diagnosis of Autism

Historically, it has not been considered a “realistic” goal in the mainstream world for a child with autism to ever lose their diagnosis, let alone lose all the symptoms of Autism Spectrum Disorder and move completely into the non-autistic range of normal social interaction and communication. Although much recent research has documented individuals with ASD…

NACD Science Corner
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Science Corner Vol. 5 – Anxiety

Anxiety disorders are supposedly the 
most common mental health issue 
today for adolescents, with one
 national study of more than 10,000 
adolescents finding that about 31%
 qualified for an anxiety disorder at 
least at one point in their lives 
(Merikangas et al., 2010). 
Prescriptions given to children for 
these anxiety disorders are
antidepressants that include selective
…

NACD Science Corner
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Science Corner Vol. 4 – Brain Imaging: What It Can and Can’t Tell Us

The National Association for Child Development is always looking for the best knowledge to further our understanding of developmental disorders and their remediation. Therefore, we are fascinated by the prospects of neuroscience research, but are fully aware of the current limitations. One major area of neuroscience research that has generated a lot of hyped buzz…

NACD Science Corner
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Science Corner Vol. 3 – The Sleep Advantage of Homeschooling: Scientifically Verified

It might not be that shocking to find homeschoolers get more sleep than their public school peers, but a new study which featured 2,600 adolescents around the nation found homeschoolers get on average 90 minutes more sleep per night! Just to put that into perspective, 90 minutes a night over the course of a 5-day school…

NACD Science Corner
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Science Corner Vol. 2: Working Memory Training Physically Changes Brain for the Better, fMRI Neuroimaging Study Finds

Last summer, a group of researchers
 published a study in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience in which they
used fMRI technology to show
auditory working memory training
 (such as the auditory sequential processing activities in Simply Smarter) resulted in physical changes 
to the brain. In addition to showing
 auditory working memory can be
 trained, this research was able…

NACD Science Corner
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Science Corner Vol. 1: Cracking the Code Behind the Cognitive Development Challenges of Down syndrome

Have you ever wondered what it is exactly about the extra chromosome 21 that makes cognitive development in children with Down syndrome so challenging? Just this March researchers at the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute published research that may have cracked the code on this one. The researchers have found that a protein called sorting nexin…

NACD & ABA Applied Behavioral Analysis
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NACD and ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis Therapy)—Very Different Approaches

We are sometimes asked how NACD differs from the ABA – Applied Behavior Analysis therapy approach to individuals with Autism. In simplistic terms, the two approaches have profound philosophical differences that impact on the specific practices as well as the understanding of what needs to be changed. NACD approaches any individual as a whole person….