Growth Charts for Cognitive Development lead to earlier Diagnosis for children with risk for psychosis

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140211162513.htm. Penn Medicine researchers have developed a better way to asses and diagnose psychosis in young children. The researchers used growth charts for cognitive development to demonstrate that the most significant lags in cognitive development correlate with the most severe cases of psychosis. The researchers administered a structured evaluation and observed symptoms of psychosis, which are anxiety, mood, attention-deficit disorder, disruptive behavior and eating disorders; in young children. They found that children who had  greater developmental lags had the most extreme symptoms of psychosis compared to the typical developing group. They also found how how such disorders such as schizophrenia manifests themselves across the sexes. They found that boys in the spectrum show an earlier decline in memory and social understanding, whereas girls showed minimal lag in memory across all age groups.