Children with developmental dyslexia (DD) display partially preserved morphology skills which they rely upon for reading and spelling. Therefore, we conducted explicit and intensive training of derivational morphology in French and Swiss individuals with DD, ages 9 to 14 years, in order to assess its effect on: morphological awareness, reading…

Executive function (EF) training has shown promise for remedying general EF deficiencies faced by students with mathematics difficulty (MD) and for improving their performance. However, latest research also suggests that the instant and sustained effects of EF training remain inconsistent. In this study, 32 Chinese students with MD, age 7 to 10…

We examined the effects of a combined phonological and print intervention program on the enhancement of phonological awareness, text reading accuracy and comprehension in fourth grade Arabic-speaking children with severe difficulties in reading accuracy (dyslexia) and reading comprehension. We compared an experimental group (n = 22; mean…

Background/Objective: Researchers have traditionally reported that individuals with Down syndrome possess a strength in their social development, yet the opposite occurs with Asperger's syndrome. Based on this premise, we sought to assess effectiveness of the social skills training program. Method: Thirty adolescents aged 11 to 14 years with Down…

This study examined differences in transfer of analogical reasoning after analogy-problem solving between 40 gifted and 95 average-ability children (aged 9-10 years old), utilising dynamic testing principles. This approach was used in order to examine potential differences between gifted and average-ability children in relation to progression…

Analogical reasoning is assumed to play a large role in learning and problem solving in everyday and school settings. It was examined whether a newly developed dynamic test of analogical reasoning would be sufficiently difficult for identifying young gifted children's potential for solving analogies. The study included 74 gifted (n = 31) and…

Objective: Theory suggests that impaired executive functioning (EF) might explain several symptoms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in children. However, only a few studies have examined the efficacy of EF training for the children using randomized control trial designs, and only two of them found significant benefits of the training. Method: We…

The study aimed to investigate the effect of a training program on improving working memory for students with learning difficulties in reading Arabic. The study sample consisted of (10) students with learning disabilities from Basic Education students from the fifth and sixth grades, and those between the ages (10-11) years as a pilot group and…

The present study investigated the usefulness of a pre-programmed, teleoperated, socially assistive peer robot in dynamic testing of complex problem solving utilising the Tower of Hanoi. The robot, in a 'Wizard of Oz' setting, provided instructions and prompts during dynamic testing to children when they had to solve 3 D Tower of Hanoi puzzles.…

Background: Outcomes of static tests provide an indication of what children have learned in the past, up to the moment of testing, and can therefore underestimate the cognitive abilities of atypically developing children, such as children with language difficulties. In contrast, dynamic tests aim to examine children's potential for learning. The…

This study sought to provide more insight into potential differences in progression of analogical reasoning comparing gifted with average-ability children taking into account age, using a dynamic testing approach, using graduated prompting techniques, in combination with microgenetic methods. The participants were between the ages of 5 and 8 years…

Sleep plays an active role in memory consolidation. Because children with Down syndrome (DS) and Williams syndrome (WS) experience significant problems with sleep and also with learning, we predicted that sleep-dependent memory consolidation would be impaired in these children when compared to typically developing (TD) children. This is the first…

Background: Dynamic testing has been proposed as a testing approach that is less disadvantageous for children who may be potentially subject to bias when undertaking conventional assessments. For example, those who encounter high levels of test anxiety, or who are unfamiliar with standardized test procedures, may fail to demonstrate their true…

Comparing deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children with their hearing peers in learning Chinese, the study tested the lexical quality hypothesis (Perfetti, 1992, 2007), which asserts the importance of building orthographic, phonological, and semantic connections in high-quality lexical representations. DHH children and hearing peers matched on…

"Developing Emotional Intelligence" is an Italian language multimedia tool created for children between 8 and 12 years of age. The software is based on the four 'branches' of model of emotional intelligence proposed by Mayer and Salovey and aims to evaluate and improve abilities in perception of emotions; using emotion to facilitate…