Five individuals with autism or other developmental disabilities participated in paired-stimulus preference assessments during repeated baseline probes. All subjects initially showed a pronounced bias by typically selecting the stimulus placed in either the left or right position. Biased responding for 3 subjects was eliminated when training…

The complicated cognitive processes involved in natural (primary) bilingualism lead to significant cognitive development. Executive functions as a fundamental component of human cognition are deemed to be affected by language learning. To date, a large number of studies have investigated how natural (primary) bilingualism influences executive…

We set out to address the adequacy of dyslexia screening in Dutch and non-western immigrant children, using the Dutch Dyslexia Screening Test (DST-NL) and outcomes of the Dutch dyslexia protocol, both of which are susceptible to cultural bias. Using the protocol as standard, we conducted an ROC (Receiver Operating Characteristics) analysis in…

Aims: This study sought to investigate the predictors of spontaneous Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) use in a naturalistic school setting. Method: The study recruited 44 students (36 boys and eight girls), aged between 6 to 18 years and their teachers (26 teachers and two teaching assistants). Teaching staff completed measures of…

We propose that attraction errors in agreement production (e.g., the key to the cabinets are missing) are related to two components of executive control: working memory and inhibitory control. We tested 138 children aged 10 to 12, an age when children are expected to produce high rates of errors. To increase the potential of individual variation…

In online education, there is a challenge to not only meet the pedagogical aspects of digital education but also to understand the user experience within learning platforms and student interaction. Through online functions and advanced technology, a student's learning style can be enhanced. "Learner Experience and Usability in Online…

Although previous research shows verbal recall of time-compressed narration is significantly enhanced when it is accompanied by a representational adjunct picture (Ritzhaupt & Barron, 2008), the reason for this increased performance remains unclear. One explanation, explored in the current study, is based on the Conjoint Retention Hypothesis…

A study is reported which tests the proposition that faces capture the attention of those with autism spectrum disorders less than a typical population. A visual search task based on the Face-in-the-Crowd paradigm was used to examine the attentional allocation of autism spectrum disorder adults for faces. Participants were required to search for…

This paper presents understandings of learning in schools where Internet-enabled Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are taken for granted. The context is a full-scale 1:1 tablet project in Danish municipality schools where this study bring forward expressions of learning from one class (12-13 year old children) in order to offer…

This article describes the implementation and benefits of a photo-based family communication method called Daily Explorations. Daily Explorations are one- to two-page photo collages that are annotated with meaningful explanations of children's play and e-mailed to parents every day. The process, described in more detail in this article, is a…

Understanding spoken words involves a rapid mapping from speech to conceptual representations. One distributed feature-based conceptual account assumes that the statistical characteristics of concepts' features--the number of concepts they occur in ("distinctiveness/sharedness") and likelihood of co-occurrence ("correlational…

In research on task-based learning and teaching, it has traditionally been assumed that differing degrees of cognitive task complexity can be inferred through task design and/or observations of differing qualities in linguistic production elicited by second language (L2) communication tasks. Without validating this assumption, however, it is…

There has been considerable interest in cognitive load in recent years, but the effect of affective load and its relationship to mental functioning has not received as much attention. In order to investigate the effects of affective stimuli on cognitive function as manifest in the ability to remember foreign language vocabulary, two groups of…

Experts are more proficient in manipulating and translating between multiple representations (MRs) of a given concept than novices. Studies have shown that instruction using MR can increase student understanding of MR, and one model for MR instruction in chemistry is the chemistry triplet proposed by Johnstone. Concreteness fading theory suggests…

Auditory hyper-reactivity is a common sensory-perceptual abnormality in autism spectrum disorders (ASD), which interrupts behavioral adaptation. We investigated acoustic startle response (ASR) modulations in 17 children with ASD and 27 with typical development (TD). Compared to TD, children with ASD had larger ASR magnitude to weak stimuli and…