We taught three high school students with high-functioning autism to increase their novel peer-directed questions when using a communication book to converse with general education partners at school. Novel question training was associated with participants asking peer-directed questions not displayed in communication books across a variety of…

The purpose of this pilot study was to determine if participants could improve their social interaction skills by participating in a virtual immersive environment. The participants used a developing virtual reality head-mounted display to engage themselves in a fully-immersive environment. While in the environment, participants had an opportunity…

This report summarizes results from Spring 2014 focus groups held with a sample of Austin Independent School District dual language program classroom teachers to find out their opinions about the dual language program.

This study is based on data from teachers' research reports in the context of an in-service workshop for professional development for teachers of the bilingual-integrated Palestinian-Jewish Schools in Israel. We used conventional qualitative methods, looking for patterns and thematic issues of relevance, which were then coded to allow for further…

Latino immigrant parents were interviewed in an urban California school district post Proposition 227. Approximately half had placed their English-learner children into bilingual classes. The others had children in English-only classes. Guided by sociohistorical psychology, the study explores the parents' motivations for the goal of preserving the…

The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) has been developing language-specific curricula for a range of languages in the "Australian Curriculum: Language"s and has also undertaken development of a "Framework for Australian Languages", to provide guidance for the development of curricula for specific…

Providing standards-based instruction in core content areas for individuals with moderate and severe disabilities is a hot topic in the field of special education, and teachers struggle to find the best methods for providing high-quality standards-based instruction in core content areas that also has personal relevance for the students. This…

This study investigated the association between therapeutic riding (TR) and the social communication and sensory processing skills of 21 elementary students with autism attending TR as part of a school group. An interrupted treatment design was employed to determine whether children were able to maintain treatment effects following the removal of…

The situation once described by Hoffmann (1985), in which children grow up exposed to three languages from an early age, is a reality for an increasing number of families. In Europe--as elsewhere--greater mobility is leading to greater numbers of mixed-language couples (Piller 2002), and, by extension, multilingual families. For such families,…

Portions of the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) play a role in working memory (WM) yet the precise mechanistic function of this region remains poorly understood. The "pure storage" hypothesis proposes that this region functions as a short-lived modality-specific memory store. Alternatively, the "internal attention" hypothesis proposes that the PPC…

The purpose of the Getty Foundation's Campus Heritage Initiative was to assist colleges and universities in the United States in managing and preserving the integrity of their significant historic buildings, sites, and landscapes. The projects supported through this initiative focused on research and survey of historic resources, preparation of…

It is widely reported that music can be beneficial to individuals with autism. This review was undertaken to determine the evidence base for the use of music as an intervention for children with autism. After searching relevant databases, 128 articles were identified of which 20 articles met the study's inclusion criteria. Composed songs and…

Ainu is the heritage language of the indigenous people of present-day southern Sakhalin, the Kurile Islands, present-day Hokkaido, and northeastern Honshu (mainland Japan). The UNESCO Interactive Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger (2009) considered the Ainu language critically endangered with only 15 speakers remaining. This article…

This paper makes a link between two activities in which the author is engaged, i.e. between work on "saving" languages and work on "teaching" languages. Since it is an invited address, the Keith Horwood Memorial Lecture, the author begins by making further, and chronologically prior, to Keith Horwood. Then he addresses three themes of the…

We examine morphosyntactic knowledge of Labrador Inuttitut by Inuit receptive bilinguals (RBs)--heritage speakers who are capable of comprehension, but produce little or no speech. A grammaticality judgment study suggests that RBs possess sensitivity to morphosyntactic violations, though to a lesser degree than fluent bilinguals. Low-proficiency…