This study focuses on teachers' ways of mediating meaning through communicative tools and modes in preschool thematic work. A socio-cultural perspective is used for analysis on how tools and modes are provided for children to make use of for communicative purposes. The research questions are: (1) what communicative tools do teachers use in their…

In Romanian preschool settings, there is a tendency to use abstract strategies in language-learning activities. The present study explored if strategies based on an embodied cognition approach facilitate learning more than traditional strategies that progress from concrete to abstract. Twenty-five children between 4 and 5 years of age listened to…

Used multiple-baseline design to assess the utility of presenting three types of cues when teaching an abstract concept such as colors to three children with autism: plain, label, and symbol. Found colors presented with cues were easier to learn than color without cues. Findings support the need for sensitivity for the highly individualized…

Examined whether emotion labels could be taught to a low-functioning, nonverbal autistic child. Introduced four emotions (happy, angry, sad, surprised) over 6 months through visual cues (photographs of known people) within an existing home-based behavioral intervention program. Using novel photographs of familiar and unfamiliar people, showed that…