New tactile curriculum materials for teaching Earth and planetary science lessons on rotation=revolution, silhouettes of objects from different views, contour maps, impact craters, asteroids, and topographic features of Mars to 11 elementary and middle school students with sight impairments at a week-long residential summer camp are presented…

Recent National Research Council reports make compelling arguments for the need to incorporate spatial abilities and use spatial technologies throughout our educational system. We conducted a pilot study to determine the pedagogical effectiveness of teaching with geographic information systems (GIS) by using a web-based GIS tool of Indiana soils.…

Aim: To describe neuropsychological disturbances and the developmental course associated with cerebellar cortical dysplasia (CCD). Method: The neuroimaging findings from 10 children (five males, five females; aged 3-10y) with CCD were reviewed and classified. These children all underwent clinical neurological examination and neuropsychological…

This paper explores secondary school students' representations of a geological map. Ninety-two high school students (ninth graders--15- to 16-years-old) participated in the survey in Turkey. The findings indicate that students have only a vague idea of how a geological map is constructed, and how the map is affected by the topography. The…

Background: The aim of the present study was to investigate the following issues: (1) Do students with borderline intellectual functioning have a pervasive pattern of impaired working memory skills across both verbal and visuo-spatial domains? (2) Is there evidence for impairment in executive function skills, and which tasks indicate greater…

Open-ended tasks focused on content specific features are regarded as an effective way to promote particular concept development and to elicit higher-order thinking. Such tasks may vary widely in their focus and approach and they can be formulated without unnecessary complexity. When mathematics tasks are designed in an open-ended fashion they can…

The association between fluid intelligence and inter-individual differences was investigated using multilevel growth curve modeling applied to data measuring intra-individual improvement on math achievement tests. A sample of 166 students (88 boys and 78 girls), ranging in age from 11 to 14 (M = 12.3, SD = 0.64), was tested. These individuals took…

Selective attention has been hypothesized to reduce distractor interference at both perceptual and postperceptual levels (Lavie, 2005), respectively, by focusing perceptual resources on the attended location and by blocking at postperceptual levels distractors that survive perceptual selection. This study measured the impact of load on these…

Patients with right hemisphere lesions often omit or misread words on the left side of a text or the beginning letters of single words which is termed neglect dyslexia (ND). Two types of reading errors are typically observed in ND: omissions and word-based reading errors. The prior are considered as space-based omission errors on the…

Early in development, there is a transition in spatial working memory (SWM). When remembering a location in a homogeneous space (e.g., in a sandbox), young children are biased toward the midline symmetry axis of the space. Over development, a transition occurs that leads to older children being biased away from midline. The dynamic field theory…

Most teachers feel confident espousing the benefits of using picture books in English lessons, talking about the importance of using the illustrations to enhance the text, engaging students and fostering a love and appreciation of literature. How many teachers passionately advocate the use of these same picture books in mathematics lessons? This…

Some people report that they consistently and involuntarily associate time events, such as months of the year, with specific spatial locations; a condition referred to as time-space synesthesia. The present study investigated the manner in which such synesthetic time-space associations affect visuo-spatial attention via an endogenous cuing…

Objective: To determine whether 7- to 12-year-old boys with ADHD, relative to non-ADHD age-mates, exhibit greater difficulty learning and remembering object locations. The second purpose was to examine the functional utility of mnemonic strategies, specifically speech-to-self, used by boys with and without ADHD. Method: Boys with and without ADHD…

The present study examined the cognitive profile in Fragile X Syndrome (FXS) males, and investigated whether cognitive profiles are similar for FXS males at different levels of intellectual functioning. Cognitive abilities in non-verbal, verbal, memory and executive functioning domains were contrasted to both a non-verbal and verbal mental age…

Arithmetic and cognitive skills of children with mathematical difficulties (MD-only), with comorbid reading difficulties (MD-RD), with reading difficulties (RD-only), and normally achieving children were examined at 3 points from Grades 3-4 to Grades 5-6 (age range, 9-13 years). Both MD groups displayed severe weaknesses in 4 domain-specific…