A study of executive functions in delinquents with developmental disabilities within a Japanese reformatory.

Many attempts have been made to address the relation between antisocial behavior and executive function deficits. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate executive functions in juvenile delinquents with developmental disabilities by using the Behavioral Assessment of the Dysexecutive Syndrome (BADS), and then cross referencing this to their performance on Wechsler IQ Test, Das Naglieri Cognitive Assessment System (DN-CAS), and Rey's Auditory Verbal Learning Test (AVLT). The data was collected from 164 participants with Mental Retardation (MR), Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD), and Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and a factor analysis was applied to results of the BADS. Two factors were extracted from the results; one factor was interpreted as low-degree of freedom executive ability (LDF-EA) and the other factor as high-degree of freedom executive ability (HDF-EA). There was no difference in IQ-matched groups with MR, ADHD and PDD, or in either factor in age- and IQ-matched groups with ADHD and PDD. While both factors had correlations with IQ and AVLT, where subjects were confined to MR, the HDF-EA had no correlation. Neither factor showed correlation with the DN-CAS performance. Moreover, scores of the LDF-EA increased associated with increases in IQ levels, however, scores of the HDF-EA appeared broadly unrelated to IQ points. The results suggested that the HDF-EA could be interpreted as a different level of executive functions compared to the LDF-EA. It is difficult to evaluate executive abilities by using only IQ testing, and the BADS would be useful to assess the level of high-degree of freedom executive functions.