The purpose of my mixed-methods approach with an explanatory sequential design study was to explore what role extreme poverty backgrounds play in social skills development and the academic performance of children in a rural central region of Angola, in southern Africa. Therefore, triangulation of interview data was achieved by a quantitative…

Learning pragmatics involves learning linguistic forms and their communicative functions as well as the context where the form-function relationships are realized. Given its socially grounded, context-sensitive nature, pragmatics may be best learned in a technology-enhanced environment that provides direct access to contextualized communicative…

Community-oriented education has witnessed an increasing interest in online service-learning opportunities. Digital Learning Companion is an online service-learning project supported by Taiwan's Ministry of Education to give students experiential learning opportunities and practice social responsibility. As part of the initiative, 189 local and…

Restricted and repetitive behaviors are a core feature of autism spectrum disorder; however, research on the functional impact of these behaviors on the quality of life for individuals with autism spectrum disorder and their families remains scarce. We conducted focus groups with parents of children with autism spectrum disorder and clinicians in…

Although there is an interest in elevating youth voice within school settings, schools remain unprepared for the wide range of expression that may be included in soliciting youth voices, preferring polite expressions over overtly emotional or negative feelings expressed about school. This case study examines boundary setting in a youth voice…

This study examined student outcomes of participating in a semester-long, intergenerational service-learning course compared to a traditional pedagogy course. At the beginning and end of the semester, students (N = 161) voluntarily completed a series of measures assessing six outcomes across four domains: personal, social, citizenship, and…

Autistic traits vary across the general population, and are linked with face recognition ability. Here we investigated potential links between autistic traits and voice recognition ability for personally familiar voices in a group of 30 listeners (15 female, 16-19 years) from the same local school. Autistic traits (particularly those related to…

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) demonstrate limited playfulness. Their difficulty engaging in meaningful interaction with others renders playful engagement in social interactions a challenge. Although little direct evidence exists regarding the promotion of these children's playful engagement, links can be established with many traits…

Autistic people are neurologically divergent, yet approaches to studying autism are framed by neurotypical definitions of being social. Using the concept of intersubjectivity, which conceptualises a variety of ways of socially relating, we investigate distinctive features of how autistic people build social understanding. A total of 30 members of…

In order to better understand which factors play a role in non-adaptive social behavior in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) we looked into physiological arousal and awareness of one's own emotions. Heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV) were measured during a public speaking task in 51 young adults with ASD and 28 typically developing (TD)…

In children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), there are often discrepancies between direct assessment and third-party reports. We compared these children with groups with/without difficulties in interpersonal problem-solving skills in order to determine whether these discrepancies appear and if they could be a diagnostic indicator for ASD.…

In this study, we wished to examine the potential relationships between the skills measured by an individually administered standardized measure of cognitive ability and a self-report measure of indirect bullying, overt aggression, and prosocial skills. Therefore, a sample of 106 female students were recruited from a private, faith-based…

Human actions induce attentional orienting toward the target of the action. We examined the influence of action cueing in social (man throwing toward a human) and non-social (man throwing toward a tree) contexts in observers with and without autism spectrum condition (ASC). Results suggested that a social interaction enhanced the cueing effect for…

This study was an attempt to understand how hypercompetitive graduate college students with ambivalent attachment style described their experience of interpersonal relationships. College graduate students have a higher rate of competitiveness than undergraduate students and others. This competitive nature can lead to positive interpersonal…

The purpose of this research is to investigate the impact of Therapeutic Horse Riding on Motor and Social Skills of children with Cerebral Palsy. Social skills are closely related to the quality of social relationships and the ability to communicate and collaborate in general (So & Brush, 2008). Motor function difficulties are common in…