Consideration of a possible use of virtual reality technologies in school contexts requires gathering together the suggestions of many scientific domains aimed at "understanding" the features of these same tools that let them offer valid support to the teaching-learning processes in educational settings. Specifically, the present study is aimed at…

A literate child is one who is able to read, write, speak and listen. Literacy begins at birth, and continues steadily as children develop. The explicit processes that form emergent literacy are for example, phonemic awareness, letter and word recognition, vocabulary enrichment and structural analysis. These literacy practices are well documented…

The acquisition of new skills over a life span is a remarkable human ability. This ability, however, is constrained by age of acquisition (AoA); that is, the age at which learning occurs significantly affects the outcome. This is most clearly reflected in domains such as language, music, and athletics. This article provides a perspective on the…

Autonomously developing organisms face several challenges when learning reaching movements. First, motor control is learned unsupervised or self-supervised. Second, knowledge of sensorimotor contingencies is acquired in contexts in which action consequences unfold in time. Third, motor redundancies must be resolved. To solve all 3 of these…

Discusses the renaissance of motor skill acquisition studies that are affording new insights into the processes by which infants and children learn to control their bodies. The article explains how studies are now focusing less on how children perform and more on how the components cooperate to produce stability or engender change, thus making…

A sequential-developmental approach to the assessment of individuals from the earliest sensorimotor period through the level of abstract reasoning is discussed. The assessment is hierarchically sequenced and is concerned with how and why individuals process information. The assessment procedures provide practical data on levels of development. (JN)

The idea that the brain may be more complex and varied in the ways that it responds to and interprets information than is generally recognized suggests that both the left and right hemispheres are in need of total development. In discussing the development of curriculum that will bring into harmony the functions of both brain hemispheres, it is…

The process of learning to play a musical instrument involves hours of individual practice. Even for players who do not reach high levels of competence, a considerable amount of time will be spent in working independently of the teacher, meaning that music learning demands a high level of self-sufficiency and the ability to be self-reflective if…

The paper describes an innovative treatment approach to severe learning disabilities in use in St. Gallen, Switzerland. The multisensory approach is based on the assumption that learning disabled children have perceptual cognitive deficits. Reality based problem-solvng events connected with tactile-kinesthetic input become the primary foci of…