title: Inefficient or insufficient encoding as potential primary deficit in neurodevelopmental performance among children with OSA.
abstract: Memory (M) impairments have been suggested in pediatric Obstructive Sleep Apnea along with attention and executive (AE), language (L), and visuospatial (V) dysfunctions. NEPSY assessment of children aged 5-9 years who were either healthy (N = 43), or who had OSA without L, V, AE (OSA(-), N = 22) or with L (N = 6), V (N = 1), AE (N = 3) (OSA(+), N = 10) dysfunctions revealed no gross memory problems in OSA; however, over the three learning trials of cross-modal association learning of name with face, the OSA(-) progressively improved performance, whereas the OSA(+) failed to progress. No within-group differences between immediate and delayed memory tasks were apparent. The data suggest the presence of slower information processing, and/or secondary memory problems, in the absence of retrieval or recall impairments among a subset of children with OSA. We hypothesize that inefficient/insufficient encoding may account for the primary deficit.
authors.affiliation: Division of Pediatric Sleep Medicine, Department of Pediatrics, Kosair Children's Hospital Research Institute, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky, USA.
authors.forename: Karen
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Spruyt
authors.forename: Oscar Sans
authors.initials: OS
authors.lastname: Capdevila
authors.forename: Leila
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Kheirandish-Gozal
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Gozal
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003071:Cognition; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D020181:Sleep Apnea, Obstructive / Q000523:psychology*; D013037:Spatial Behavior; D014796:Visual Perception