Abstracts

Rationale: Strategic organization for verbal learning and drawing a complex figure has been shown to increase with maturation and to enhance verbal and figural memory. In normal children, these developmental changes have been specifically attributed to frontal gray matter thinning rather than mesial temporal changes. The relationship between strategic organization/memory and epilepsy and other disorders was evaluated by comparing the verbal learning strategies and memory of children vs. adolescents grouped according to their progression strategy for drawing a complex figure.Methods: Subjects were 30 children and 38 adolescents diagnosed with video EEG-confirmed epilepsy (14FL, 22TL), psychiatric disorder (13), or nonverbal learning disability (19). Groups did not differ in age, gender, or Full Scale IQ (>70) and were administered the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure (ROCF) and Rey Auditory-Verbal Learning Test (AVLT). Measures of strategy utilization were subjective organization (SO; Sternberg & Tulvig,1977) and serial position effects (SPEs: Primacy, Middle, Recency) for the AVLT and progression strategy for the ROCF(Akshoomoff & Stiles, 1995).Results: Univariate and multivariate ANOVAs were done on the AVLT (SO,SPE,Delayed Recall) and ROCF (Copy,Memory) for subjects grouped according to age (child,adolescent),diagnostic group (FLE,TLE,PSY,NLD) and ROCF strategy (1,2,3+ units or random). Other than the age-expected differences in AVLT recall and ROCF copy and recall, results showed that AVLT primacy and middle SPEs were superior for those using ROCF configural strategies (.01) and that SO was greater in TLE than FLE (.04). Conclusions: As a group, adolescents use more effective, integrative stratgies for learning words and drawing a complex figure and consequently show greater memory for both than do preadolescents. Across age groups and diagnostic groups, there were no differences in AVLT SPEs or ROFT strategy; however, inidividuals with TLE showed greater SO on the AVLT than those with FLE. The latter result is consistent with delayed or altered maturation of prefrontal regions in children/adolescents with FLE.