Comparison of Executive Functions in Children with Epilepsy and Normal Children

Background & since epilepsy is a neurotic disorder, the study of its related cognitive disorders lies in the field of neuropsychology. Among these disorders we can mention to brain injury in patients with epilepsy and its various effects on executive functions. Current study aimed to compare children with epilepsy and normal children in terms of their executive functioning. present study was a casual-comparative study. The sample consisted of 60 participants (30 patients with epilepsy and 30 normal individuals) that were selected using convenience sampling method among all the patients referred to Bu-Ali Hospital in Ardabil City in 1392. Data were collected using Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) (Grant and Berg, 1984), and analyzed using independent sample t-test. according to the results of independent sample t-test, comparing to normal children, children with epilepsy showed more total and perseverative errors, and less completed categories. In addition, comparing to normal group, these children showed a higher tendency to stick to a single rule in categorizing the cards. In this study, we examined the effects of the age of seizure onset and epileptic seizure frequency on executive functioning. Results indicated that among the children with epilepsy, those with earlier onset of seizure and more frequent epileptic seizure had more difficulty in completing the categories. Moreover, comparing to patients with focal epilepsy, patients with generalized epilepsy showed more perseverative errors. However, the groups did not differ significantly in terms of their total errors. according to the findings of this paper, comparing to normal children, children with epilepsy showed poorer executive functioning performance. The implications of this finding are discussed.