Background: Children and young people (CYP) with severe or profound and multiple learning disabilities are more likely to experience difficulties engaging for long periods. Finding ways to facilitate their engagement is crucial in promoting their social and emotional development and their mental well-being, particularly as they are more vulnerable…

The brain undergoes profound development across childhood and adolescence, including continuous changes in brain morphology, connectivity, and functioning that are, in part, dependent on one's experiences. These neurobiological changes are accompanied by significant changes in children's and adolescents' cognitive learning. By drawing from studies…

There is increasing interest in the use of games to scaffold social skills training for autistic children and youth. However, there is no consensus on how to best approach their design, so that learning opportunities are maximised. This article presents a systematic scoping review of empirical studies that use games as social skills training for…

Background: Children in foster care are at high risk of future mental health and developmental difficulties. A number of interventions may be helpful; however, the effectiveness of interventions specifically for pre-school children in foster care is not well established. This is an important omission, since infancy and early childhood may be the…

Researchers increasingly employ longitudinal trajectory methods to understand developmental pathways of people on the autism spectrum across the lifespan. By assessing developmental or health-related outcome domains at three or more timepoints, trajectory studies can characterize their shape and varying rates of change over time. The purpose of…

Picturebooks offer powerful supports for teaching diverse content across different curriculum areas. Research and curriculum resources document their use in inquiry-based education practices, particularly in relation to science and philosophy. There is, however, little theoretical analysis of this use or cross-curricular comparisons. Applying a…

The causes underlying comorbid learning difficulties in reading (RD) and math (MD) are still a matter of debate. Based on current research, two models for the relation of the cognitive profile of isolated and combined learning difficulties (RDMD) are discussed. Regarding the "multi-deficit model", the profile of RDMD is characterized by…

Children on the autism spectrum experience difficulties with social interactions, often resulting in lower quality of friendships. As such, children with autism often benefit from support with social skills, which are usually delivered in school settings. Social skills are not limited to school settings. Playdates are defined as prearranged…

Cross-age tutoring is an educational model where an older tutor is paired with a younger tutee, valued for its economic advantages and capacity to engage participants. This model leads to improvements in both academic performance and behavior, as evidenced by Shenderovich et al. ("International Journal of Educational Research, 76,"…

Multilingual families face decisions about the linguistic upbringing of their children. These decisions shape their family language policy (FLP) which potentially impacts the children and their family. Departing from this hypothesis we conducted a systematic literature review applying the PRISMA guidelines, screening three databases, using search…

Immigrant families bring myriad strengths through their home literacy practices, which contribute to their children's biliteracy growth. This systematic review critically analysed 28 recent studies on the relationship between home literacy practices and biliteracy development of immigrant bilingual children. Against a backdrop of host societies…

Background and aims: Current evidence shows that children with developmental language disorder (DLD) benefit from spaced retrieval during word learning activities. Word recall is quite good relative to recall with alternative word learning procedures. However, recall on an absolute basis can be improved further; many studies report that fewer than…

Beyond correlational studies exploring the benefits of nature exposure, there have been studies assessing interventions that aim to improve nature connection in children and adolescents. A feeling of connection with nature or 'nature connectedness' describes our attitude towards nature, primarily reflecting the emotional, cognitive, and…

Handwriting and spelling deficits are common struggles experienced by children with specific learning disabilities (SLD), but there is little evidence on interventions that target these areas for children with SLD. To systematically review the research investigating the effectiveness of handwriting and spelling interventions for children with SLD.…

This paper sets out to peruse the role of various theories or more precisely, hypotheses invoked in second language acquisition (SLA) research by surveying three empirical studies pertaining to the critical period hypothesis in the SLA of phonetics and phonology. In particular, the three studies reviewed are titled in chronological order as (1)…