Children can outgrow autism, but learning issues can persist

Around 7% of children can outgrow autism by the time they hit elementary school, but learning issues persist.

For some parents, the miracle does occur. Their child, diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder as a toddler, will test as normal (socially and cognitively) once in elementary school. A new study finds that one in every 14 autistic toddlers will no longer meet the diagnostic criteria once they reach elementary school. However, the majority of these exceptional children will continue to display some emotional or behavioral symptoms at that stage and so require some form of special education, note the researchers who spoke at the annual meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies.

“Understanding the full range of possible outcomes is important for parents, clinicians, and the educational system,” wrote the authors in their presentation abstract.

Surprised by what they had seen in practice, an early intervention program team of doctors and researchers examined the medical records of 38 remarkable children. Part of a group of 569 children total, all had been diagnosed with autism by the team. The total children, who lived in the Bronx, represented a range of racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds: just under half were on Medicaid (46 percent), while 44 percent were Hispanic, 36 percent Caucasian, and 10 percent African-American.

Between the years of 2003 and 2013, all these hundreds of children met the diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorder, yet, when re-evaluated four years later, 38 (or seven percent) no longer displayed symptoms of the disorder. Importantly, the same intervention team diagnosing the children had provided therapy and treatment and also monitored the children's progress over time.

During the follow-up examination, three of the 38 exceptional children displayed no disabilities of any kind. They had outgrown all of their social, psychological, and cognitive difficulties.

Still, the overwhelming majority (92 percent) of the 38 had residual learning and/or emotional/behavioral problems. Two-thirds displayed a language/learning disability, while nearly half were diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, or disruptive behavior disorder. About a quarter showed signs of a mood disorder, an anxiety disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, or selective mutism.

Despite remaining challenges, it is still both astounding and inspiring that some of the children had overcome a primary hurdle of autism.

“Autism generally has been considered a lifelong condition, but seven percent of children in this study who received an early diagnosis experienced a resolution of autistic symptoms over time,” Dr. Lisa Shulman of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Children’s Hospital at Montefiore stated in a press release. Certainly, the hope is these remarkable children may someday surmount their residual challenges as well.

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Study: Children with ADHD may have to squirm to learn

New research indicates that children with ADHD may have to squirm to learn.

For decades, frustrated parents and teachers have barked at fidgety children with ADHD to "Sit still and concentrate!"

But new research conducted at UCF shows that if you want ADHD kids to learn, you have to let them squirm. The foot-tapping, leg-swinging and chair-scooting movements of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder are actually vital to how they remember information and work out complex cognitive tasks, according to a study published in an early online release of the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology.

The findings show the longtime prevailing methods for helping children with ADHD may be misguided.

"The typical interventions target reducing hyperactivity. It's exactly the opposite of what we should be doing for a majority of children with ADHD," said one of the study's authors, Mark Rapport, head of the Children's Learning Clinic at the University of Central Florida. "The message isn't 'Let them run around the room,' but you need to be able to facilitate their movement so they can maintain the level of alertness necessary for cognitive activities."

The research has major implications for how parents and teachers should deal with ADHD kids, particularly with the increasing weight given to students' performance on standardized testing. The study suggests that a majority of students with ADHD could perform better on classroom work, tests and homework if they're sitting on activity balls or exercise bikes, for instance.

The study at the UCF clinic included 52 boys ages 8 to 12. Twenty-nine of the children had been diagnosed with ADHD and the other 23 had no clinical disorders and showed normal development.

Each child was asked to perform a series of standardized tasks designed to gauge "working memory," the system for temporarily storing and managing information required to carry out complex cognitive tasks such as learning, reasoning and comprehension.

Children were shown a series of jumbled numbers and a letter that flashed onto a computer screen, then asked to put the numbers in order, followed by the letter. A high-speed camera recorded the kids, and observers recorded their every movement and gauged their attention to the task.

Rapport's previous research had already shown that the excessive movement that's a trademark of hyperactive children -- previously thought to be ever-present -- is actually apparent only when they need to use the brain's executive brain functions, especially their working memory.

The new study goes an important step further, proving the movement serves a purpose.

"What we've found is that when they're moving the most, the majority of them perform better," Rapport said. "They have to move to maintain alertness."

By contrast, the children in the study without ADHD also moved more during the cognitive tests, but it had the opposite effect: They performed worse.

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Study: Children with autism can learn social skills

A recent study indicated that children with autism can learn how to be social.

When Debra Kamps, senior scientist at the University of Kansas Life Span Institute, first began researching how to improve the social and communication skills of children with autism in natural settings like schools in the 1970s, it was hard to find children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) who were in classrooms with their typically developing peers.

Today, Kamps and her colleagues from KU and the University of Washington can say with certainty that they know how teachers, speech therapists and others can teach social and communication skills to kids with ASD and their peers in the classroom, at lunch and even at recess after the results of the first large randomized study of a social communication intervention verified years of earlier research.

"We know how to do this, and our research has shown us that it is not hard to teach people how to do it," she said.

The four-year study, funded by the U.S. Department of Education, involved 95 students with ASD in Kansas and Washington. Of that group, 56 children participated in a two-year intervention from kindergarten through first grade in which each child was grouped with two to three typically developing classmates in a peer network, while the remaining 39 were the control group.

The social peer network focused on teaching social communication skills such as requesting, commenting and saying "niceties" such as please and thank you while playing with toys and board games.

To find out if the children were continuing to use social skills, the researchers followed up with probes outside of the intervention sessions at four points in time.

"We found that the children who participated in the social network not only made significant progress in social communication during the intervention but also made many more initiations to their peers in general," Kamps said. "Teachers also reported that children in the intervention were more social and had better classroom behavior."

Although peer networks are still not used routinely in schools, often due to lack of resources, Kamps hopes that the promising results from larger studies will change that, and she said that some teachers who participated in the study have adopted the Peer Networks intervention in their classrooms.

"Seeing the expression on the faces of the children when their peer buddies come to class -- that's what's kept me going all these years," she said.

See video from the project here: http://autismconnections.ku.edu/connecting-kids/play-tips

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Why children with ADHD may make poor decisions

A study shows that children with ADHD might make poor decisions due to different learning and decision-making processes.

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is one of the most common psychiatric disorders among school children. Pupils with ADHD often make poorer decisions than their unaffected classmates. Researchers from the University of Zurich now discovered that different learning and decision-making mechanisms are responsible for these behaviors, and localized the underlying impairments in the brain.

Which shirt do we put on in the morning? Do we drive to work or take the train? From which takeaway joint do we want to buy lunch? We make hundreds of different decisions every day. Even if these often only have a minimal impact, it is extremely important for our long-term personal development to make decisions that are as optimal as possible. People with ADHD often find this difficult, however. They are known to make impulsive decisions, often choosing options which bring a prompt but smaller reward instead of making a choice that yields a greater reward later on down the line. Researchers from the University Clinics for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University of Zurich, now reveal that different decision-making processes are responsible for such suboptimal choices and that these take place in the middle of the frontal lobe.

Mathematical models help to understand the decision-making processes

In the study, the decision-making processes in 40 young people with and without ADHD were examined. Lying in a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner to record the brain activity, the participants played a game where they had to learn which of two images carried more frequent rewards. In order to understand the impaired mechanisms of participants with ADHD better, learning algorithms which originally stemmed from the field of artificial intelligence were used to evaluate the data. These mathematical models help to understand the precise learning and decision-making mechanisms better. "We were able to demonstrate that young people with ADHD do not inherently have difficulties in learning new information; instead, they evidently use less differentiated learning patterns, which is presumably why sub-optimal decisions are often made," says first author Tobias Hauser.

Multimodal imaging affords glimpses inside the brain

In order to study the brain processes that triggered these impairments, the authors used multimodal imaging methods, where the participants were examined using a combined measurement of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG) to record the electrical activity and the blood flow in the brain. It became apparent that participants with ADHD exhibit an altered functioning in the medial prefrontal cortex -- a region in the middle of the frontal lobe. This part of the brain is heavily involved in decision-making processes, especially if you have to choose between several options, and in learning from errors. Although a change in activity in this region was already discovered in other contexts for ADHD, the Zurich researchers were now also able to pinpoint the precise moment of this impairment, which already occurred less than half a second after a feedback, i.e. at a very early stage.

Psychologist Tobias Hauser, who is now researching at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, University College London, is convinced that the results fundamentally improve our understanding of the mechanisms of impaired decision-making behavior in people with ADHD. The next step will be to study the brain messenger substances. "If our findings are confirmed, they will provide key clues as to how we might be able to design therapeutic interventions in future," explains Hauser.

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Children May Need Gradual Transition Back to Academics After Concussion

The American Academy of Pediatrics claims that once a child has a concussion, he or she may need a gradual transition back to school and academic classes.

This article is helpful in that it details accommodations.

I have some trouble with the assertions about rest. JR

A concussion should not only take a student athlete off the playing field -- it may also require a break from the classroom, according to a new clinical report from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).

In the clinical report, "Returning to Learning Following a Concussion," released Sunday, Oct. 27 at the AAP National Conference & Exhibition in Orlando, the AAP offers guidance to pediatricians caring for children and adolescents after suffering a concussion.

"Students appear physically normal after a concussion, so it may be difficult for teachers and administrators to understand the extent of the child's injuries and recognize the potential need for academic adjustments," said Mark Halstead, MD, FAAP, a lead author of the clinical report. "But we know that children who've had a concussion may have trouble learning new material and remembering what they've learned, and returning to academics may worsen concussion symptoms."

Research has shown that a school-aged student usually recovers from a concussion within three weeks. If symptoms are severe, some students may need to stay home from school after a concussion. If symptoms or mild or tolerable, the parent may consider returning him or her to school, perhaps with some adjustments. Students with severe or prolonged symptoms lasting more than 3 weeks may require more formalized academic accommodations.

The AAP recommends a collaborative team approach to help a student recovering from a concussion. This team should consist of the child or adolescent's pediatrician, family members and individuals at the child's school responsible for both the student's academic schedule and physical activity. Detailed guidance on returning to sports and physical activities is contained in the 2010 AAP clinical report, "Sport-Related Concussion in Children and Adolescents."

A symptom checklist can help evaluate what symptoms the student is experiencing, and how severe they are.

"Every concussion is unique and symptoms will vary from student to student, so managing a student's return to the classroom will require an individualized approach," said Dr. Halstead. "The goal is to minimize disruptions to the student's life and return the student to school as soon as possible, and as symptoms improve, to increase the student's social, mental and physical activities."

Because relatively little research has been conducted on how concussion affects students' learning, the AAP based its report primarily on expert opinion and adapted it from a concussion management program developed at the Rocky Mountain Hospital for Children, Center for Concussion in Denver, Colo. The AAP calls for further research on the effects and role of cognitive rest after concussion to improve understanding of the best ways to help a student recovering from a concussion.

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Preschoolers learn better with midday naps

Research shows that a midday nap helps preschool children retain what they learned that morning showing how important sleep is for learning and creating memories.

A midday nap can help pre-school children remember what they learned in the morning, according to a study by psychologists in the US.

The research suggests that carers and nurseries that phase out after-lunch sleeps may be harming children's ability to learn, by disrupting the way their brains store memories.

Pre-schoolers who went without a midday sleep fared worse on memory tests than those who napped. They also failed to improve their scores even after a good night's sleep, the researchers found.

The findings highlight the crucial role of sleep in consolidating memories, a process that underpins the brain's ability to learn new information.

The children who benefited most were "habitual nappers" who would sleep when carers encouraged them to, rather than more mature children who had outgrown the need for a nap.

For the study, psychologists went into pre-school classrooms and taught 40 children aged three to nearly five years old a simple computer game. It required them to memorize the positions on a grid of images including a cat, an umbrella, and a policeman. The children were trained from 10am until they could remember the positions of around 75% of the pictures.

The scientists visited each child twice over the course of the study. On one visit, the child slept for an hour or so between 1pm and 3pm, and stayed awake on the other. To see how sleep affected their memory, the scientists tested each child again later the same afternoon.

Those who napped saw no change in their morning score of 75%, but the ones who stayed awake fared much worse, averaging scores of 65%, according to a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"If they stayed awake they forgot more of the items they had remembered in the morning, whereas if they took a nap, they remembered all the items they had learned in the morning," said Rebecca Spencer at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

To check whether the nappers were simply more alert and attentive than the others, the scientists returned the next day and tested the children again. Their scores did not change, suggesting that daytime sleep was crucial.

Spencer said that parents and pre-schools are steadily cutting down the time given to children's naps to fit a convenient schedule, or to make more time for a curriculum.

"You often see children forced out of napping, and hopefully this will help parents and pre-schools to understand that maybe that's not the best decision, and that a nap is an important part of the day," said Spencer.

"This is the science that's needed to preserve nap time. If our goals are to prepare children for early education, the naps are consistent with that goal because it's really helping them to learn," she added.

The scientists went on to look at the brain activity of 14 children while they slept in the unversity's sleep lab. They found that children with the best memory recall experienced more "sleep spindles" – brief bursts of activity thought to happen when the brain shunts memories from short-term storage in the hippocampus to the neocortex.

"This demonstrates very vividly the value of sleep for consolidating memories. Very young children find it quite difficult to retain information over the course of a full day, so in those circumstances, a nap is going to be useful for ensuring that whatever they learn is retained in the longer term," said Gareth Gaskell, professor of psychology at York University.

"At these ages, children are shifting from multiple sleeps in 24 hours to a single sleep overnight. It may well be that non-habitual nappers are becoming more adult-like, and have got that little bit further in the process."

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Back to school sleeping tips

This article gives tips for how to prepare your child to successfully go back to school, most importantly by making sure they are getting enough sleep.

Did you know the best preparation for back to school is a good night’s sleep? Lack of sleep can affect a child’s performance, attention, learning, behavior and biological functions, experts say. In fact, recent studies show that American students might be falling behind in school due to a lack of shut-eye.

With all the excitement and stress that accompanies the new school year, many children slip into a pattern all too familiar to tired parents. One more book, one more glass of water, one more TV show ... the child who continually resists going to bed experiences difficulty in falling asleep, resulting in what doctors identify as limit-setting sleep disorder.

Parents can help children through the transition by creating an enjoyable bedtime routine that’s fun and relaxing, says Dr. Laura Sergis, pediatrician for the Children’s Medical Group and advisory board member at Cloud b, creators of award-winning products designed to help children sleep. The all important routine can include family story time with favorite books, sing-alongs to favorite lullabies and cuddly companions that alleviate night time fears with soothing sounds and lights. Incorporating a trusted buddy like Cloud b’s newTwilight Carz in the bedtime routine helps children transition from playtime to bedtime with its fun push and play action by day and its soothing starlight projection by night.

Sleep expert Kim West, licensed certified social worker, also known as The Sleep Lady, recommends that all electronics be turned off an hour before bedtime. Homework and getting bags together should be done before the one-hour electronics off time – the one hour should be for relaxing activities including bathing, washing up, reading, talking about the day, etc. Read stories like the new Scholastic classic, “My Turtle and Me”, inspired by Cloud b’s Twilight Turtle, an adorable plush that projects a soothing view of the night sky to comfort children to a peaceful night’s sleep.

Parents can add another magical element to the routine with Cloud b’s new Twilight Turtle Tunes that plays personalized lullabies featuring favorite songs, soothing sounds and even the voices of loving parents or caregivers as it projects a starry sky above. Parents put it all together on the Twilight Turtle Tunes app that delivers the magic to the special edition toy via Bluetooth.

In planning the ideal bedtime, West suggests parents do “the math backwards.” For example, if your 2-year-old needs to be up at 7 a.m. to get dressed and out the door to daycare, then he should be asleep by 8 p.m. (This age needs, on average, 11 hours at night and two hours during the day.)

She notes that it also goes without saying that parents should eliminate caffeine from their children’s diets. If it can’t be done completely, then no caffeine after 3 p.m. Dinner should be at least two hours before bedtime so that your child gets a chance to digest.

Finally, exercise during the day does help a child sleep better, but try to avoid exercise an hour before bedtime. Definitely avoid rough-housing, which can really rile up a child just when you want him to be settling down.

As parents find the best routine and stick to it, they’ll discover that the whole family is functioning better. Bedtime may become the best time of the day – a calm, quiet moment before slumber to make great memories and strengthen the bond between parents and children.

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Sleep Apnea in Children leads to Learning Complications

Obstructive sleep apnea in children leads to learning complications such as ADHD, behavioral problems, or learning problems.

New research confirms the relationship between obstructive sleep apnea in children and ADHD, as well as other behavioral and cognitive problems. Children with sleep apnea, a common type of disordered breathing during sleep, are more likely to have difficulties with learning and attention.

Obstructive sleep apnea, a type of sleep-disordered breathing (SDB), affects about 2 percent of children in the United States, according to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. The link between obstructive sleep apnea in children and ADHD (attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder) has been previously established, but this is the first sleep study to use self-reports in assessing children's adaptive behavior, or ability to adapt to new situations.

The study, published in the April edition of the journal SLEEP, analyzed sleep and cognitive data from 263 Arizona children enrolled in the Tucson Children's Assessment of Sleep Apnea Study (TuCASA) over five years. The children, all between 6 and 11 years old, completed overnight sleep studies and standard series of neurobehavioral tests at the beginning and end of the 5-year period. Their parents also answered questionnaires about the children's behavior.

The sleep studies divided the children into four groups: those who never had sleep-disordered breathing, those who had it the first time but not the second, those who had it only the second time (new onset), and those who had it both times (persistent).

The results showed that children with new onset sleep apnea were at least four times as likely to have behavioral problems- the likelihood rose to six times higher if they had persistent sleep apnea.

The children with obstructive sleep apnea were more likely to have parents reporting problems with their hyperactivity, attention, communication abilities, self-care, and ability to adapt to new situations. They were also likely to be suffering academically, with grades of C or lower in school.

"This study provides some helpful information for medical professionals consulting with parents about treatment options for children with SDB that, although it may remit, there are considerable behavioral risks associated with continued SDB," said Dr. Michelle Perfect, the study's lead author and assistant professor in psychology at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Obstructive sleep apnea is a major cause of snoring, occurring when soft tissue in the back of the throat relaxes too much during sleep and collapses into the airway. This cuts off oxygen intake, and the temporary suffocation sends a signal to the brain to wake up immediately. When sleep apnea is especially severe, it can interrupt sleep hundreds of times throughout the night- depriving the brain of oxygen and causing exhaustion the next day.

Children with sleep-disordered breathing generally have larger tonsils and adenoids than other children their age, and most children with sleep apnea have a history of loud snoring. Effective treatment options for children include the surgical removal of the tonsils and adenoids or the use of continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) therapy.

The Arizona researchers say in their study that most children with sleep apnea have larger tonsils and adenoids than those without it, and are much more likely to snore loudly. Tonsillectomies can provide effective sleep apnea treatment, and so can continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP therapy).

Perfect said in a statement that obstructive sleep apnea in children typically declines into adolescence, but that "taking a wait and see approach is risky" for parents who are worried about their children's cognitive and behavioral development.

"School personnel should also consider the possibility that SDB contributes to difficulties with hyperactivity, learning and behavioral and emotional dysregulation in the classroom."

The New York Times suggests that ADHD-related learning problems may often result from obstructive sleep apnea in children, and that the symptoms could be better treated with sleep improvements than with stimulant medications like Adderall and Ritalin, which can actually increase sleep deprivation.

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Study claims home-schooled students are better rested than other students

A new study shows that children who are home-schooled get are better rested than other students.

Home-schooled students may be better equipped to learn because they're getting a lot more sleep, a new study suggests.

The first-of-its-kind national study of more than 2,600 adolescents, including about 500 home-taught kids, found that home-schooled students slept an average of 90 minutes more per night than students attending public or private schools.

By the end of the week, that's almost an entire night's sleep traditional students are missing, says Lisa Meltzer, the study's lead author and an assistant professor of pediatrics at National Jewish Health in Denver. She says the changes brought by adolescence include alterations to when the sleep hormone melatonin is released in teens' bodies.

Meltzer spent 2012 gathering and analyzing the data and finalized them this month. The study found that 55% of home-schooled teens got the optimal amount of sleep per week, as opposed to 24.5% of traditional public and private school students.

"You've living in Philadelphia, but your internal clock is in California," Meltzer says. "As the week goes on, that sleep debt accumulates and makes it harder to learn."

Holly Syx, 36, says home-schooling her six kids in Adger, Ala., means greater flexibility in schedules and a "very relaxed" atmosphere. She remembers hating to wake up early when she attended school, and she lets her kids wake up when they want. Learning starts around 9 a.m., she says, but they get more done than if the kids were in school.

The inflexible schedule of conventional school systems is a big reason many parents choose to teach their kids at home, says Brian Ray, president of the National Home Education Research Institute in Salem, Ore. Ray says more than 2 million kids are home-schooled in America. He says strict schedules, including early start times, means schools "run the family, rather than the family and kids running their lives."

"Home-based education makes it possible to have customization of education that schoolteachers dream of, and frankly don't get to do," Ray says.

Traditional high school educations provide valuable experiences and activities that home-schooled kids may miss out on, counters Frank Wells, a spokesman for the California Teachers Association. He says the sleep discrepancies may be caused in part by students' overloaded schedules, but "regardless of where kids go to school, parents and teachers need to work together to make sure students are getting the rest they need."

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Childrens' sleep reinforces what they learn during the day

Studies show that the brain stores knowledge learned during the day during sleep. This is true for both adults and children, but it is more effective in children.

During sleep, our brains store what we have learned during the day ‒ a process even more effective in children than in adults, new research shows.

It is important for children to get enough sleep. Children's brains transform subconsciously learned material into active knowledge while they sleep -- even more effectively than adult brains do, according to a study by Dr. Ines Wilhelm of the University of Tübingen's Institute for Medical Psychology and Behavioral Neurobiology. Dr Wilhelm and her Swiss and German colleagues have published their results in Nature Neuroscience.

Studies of adults have shown that sleeping after learning supports the long-term storage of the material learned, says Dr Wilhelm. During sleep, memory is turned into a form that makes future learning easier; implicit knowledge becomes explicit and therefore becomes more easily transferred to other areas.

Children sleep longer and deeper, and they must take on enormous amounts of information every day. In the current study, the researchers examined the ability to form explicit knowledge via an implicitly-learned motor task. Children between 8 and 11, and young adults, learned to guess the predetermined series of actions -- without being aware of the existence of the series itself. Following a night of sleep or a day awake, the subjects' memories were tested. The result: after a night's sleep, both age groups could remember a larger number of elements from the row of numbers than those who had remained awake in the interim. And the children were much better at it than the adults.

"In children, much more efficient explicit knowledge is generated during sleep from a previously learned implicit task, says Wilhelm. And the children's extraordinary ability is linked with the large amount of deep sleep they get at night. "The formation of explicit knowledge appears to be a very specific ability of childhood sleep, since children typically benefit as much or less than adults from sleep when it comes to other types of memory tasks."

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New Research Claims Sleep Learning is Possible

A new study from Israel shows that it is possible to learn while you're sleeping.

A new study that looks at subconscious learning found that it is possible to learn while sleeping.

Researchers at the Weizmann Institute in Israel measured heart rates, breathing rates and sleep states combined with smells and tones to make the finding.

Red Orbit reported that the study used volunteers for the sleep study and paired good and bad odors with tones simultaneously over the course of a night.

The next night the researchers found that the tone associated with the bad smell affected the breathing of the subject.

The good tone caused the volunteers to inhale deeply.

Even while awake, reported the Jerusalem Post, the subjects' breathing was affected by the tones.

The New York Times said the study authors found that the experiment worked better when the associations were made during the REM phase of sleeping.

“The common knowledge is that you cannot learn new information while you’re asleep, even though your brain is able to do so many other things while you are asleep,” said lead author Anat Arzi, of the Weizmann Institute, reported the New York Times.

“We need to understand where the border lies between what we can and what we cannot learn in sleep."

The study was published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

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Study: Special-Ed Students at Greater Risk of Being Bullied

Students with visible disabilities and those receiving special education services for behavioral problems are at greater risk of being bullied and of bullying others, according to a new study.

These children also are more likely to engage in antisocial behavior and have disciplinary problems at school, the researchers found.

The findings reveal the complex nature of bullying, the study authors pointed out in the report, which was published June 27 in the Journal of School Psychology.

"These results paint a fairly bleak picture for students with disabilities in terms of bullying, victimization and disciplinary actions," lead author Susan Swearer, professor of school psychology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said in a university news release. "Sadly, these are the students who most need to display pro-social behavior and receive support from their peers."

The study included more than 800 special-ed and general-ed students between the ages of 9 and 16 from nine different schools. The investigators found that 38 percent of the students admitted to bullying other students and 67 percent said they had been the victims of bullies.

Not only were special-ed students at greater risk for being bullied or bullying others, students with visible or more obvious disabilities, such as language or hearing impairments or mild mental handicaps, were victimized most often. They also reported the highest levels of bullying.

On the other hand, the study authors found that students with non-observable disabilities, such as a learning disability, were not affected as much by bullying and reported similar levels of bullying as students without disabilities.

"The observable nature of the disability makes it easy to identify those students as individuals with disabilities, which may place them at greater risk for being the easy target of bullying," Swearer said in the news release. "Also, being frustrated with the experience of victimization, those students might engage in bullying behavior as a form of revenge."

There were no significant differences in bullying between boys and girls, the findings showed. General-ed students in fifth grade were victimized more often than students in grades six through nine. For students in special-ed, however, there was no difference in bullying by grade level.

Anti-bullying interventions should focus on students' pro-social skills, the study authors concluded. Those in general education could serve as pro-social role models for students with disabilities, they suggested. In addition, students with visible disabilities should be better integrated into general-education classes, which may prevent them from being bullied.

"Programming should be consistently implemented across general and special education, should occur in each grade, and should be part of an inclusive curriculum," the authors noted. "A culture of respect, tolerance and acceptance is our only hope for reducing bullying among all school-aged youth."

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Head Impacts in Sports May Reduce Learning in College Athletes

A new study suggests that head impacts experienced during contact sports such as football and hockey may worsen some college athletes' ability to acquire new information. The research is published in the May 16, 2012, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

The study involved college athletes at three Division I schools and compared 214 athletes in contact sports to 45 athletes in non-contact sports such as track, crew and Nordic skiing at the beginning and at the end of their seasons. The contact sport athletes wore special helmets that recorded the acceleration speed and other data at the time of any head impact.

The contact sport athletes experienced an average of 469 head impacts during the season. Athletes were not included in the study if they were diagnosed with a concussion during the season.

All of the athletes took tests of thinking and memory skills before and after the season. A total of 45 contact sport athletes and 55 non-contact sport athletes from one of the schools also took an additional set of tests of concentration, working memory and other skills.

"The good news is that overall there were few differences in the test results between the athletes in contact sports and the athletes in non-contact sports," said study author Thomas W. McAllister, MD, of The Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth in Lebanon, N.H. "But we did find that a higher percentage of the contact sport athletes had lower scores than would have been predicted after the season on a measure of new learning than the non-contact sport athletes."

A total of 22 percent of the contact sport athletes performed worse than expected on the test of new learning, compared to four percent of the non-contact sport athletes.

McAllister noted that the study did not find differences in test results between the two groups of athletes at the beginning of the season, suggesting that the cumulative head impacts that contact athletes had incurred over many previous seasons did not result in reduced thinking and memory skills in the overall group.

"These results are somewhat reassuring, given the recent heightened concern about the potential negative effects of these sports," he said. "Nevertheless, the findings do suggest that repetitive head impacts may have a negative effect on some athletes."

McAllister said it's possible that some people may be genetically more sensitive to head impacts.

The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health and the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment.

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