Individuals diagnosed with autism suffer from numerous social, affective and linguistic impairments. It has also been suggested that they have a global imitation deficit. That hypothesis, however, is compromised by the fact that individuals with autism suffer from various motor impairments. Here we describe an experiment on cognitive imitation, a…

Purpose: To examine the influence of visual information on speech intelligibility for a group of speakers with dysarthria associated with Parkinson's disease. Method: Eight speakers with Parkinson's disease and dysarthria were recorded while they read sentences. Speakers performed a concurrent manual task to facilitate typical speech production.…

Verbal reminders play a pervasive role in memory retrieval by human adults. In fact, relatively nonspecific verbal information (e.g. "Remember the last time we ate at that restaurant?") will often cue vivid recollections of a past event even when presented outside the original encoding context. Although research has shown that memory retrieval by…

Background: The study of cerebral specialization in persons with Down syndrome (DS) has revealed an anomalous pattern of organization. Specifically, persons with DS elicit a right cerebral hemisphere lateralization for receptive language and a left cerebral hemisphere lateralization for the production of simple and complex movements: a pattern…

This article presents a lesson called Memory Palaces. A memory palace is a memory tool used to remember information, usually as visual images, in a sequence that is logical to the person remembering it. In his book, "In the Palaces of Memory", George Johnson calls them "...structure(s) for arranging knowledge. Lots of connections to language arts,…

Artworks that are circular in nature are often referred to as mandalas. "Mandala" means center, circle, or circumference. Mandalas are created in many cultures for a variety of reasons, most of which are related to self-expression, ritual, and religion. In this article, the author describes how her students created mandalas. She also provides…

The looking behavior of children with pervasive developmental disorder (PDD) and age- and IQ-matched normal control children was studied using infrared oculography. Stimuli varying in complexity and topic were presented to test whether children with PDD have specific abnormalities in looking behavior to complex stimuli and/or to faces. All…

The "Adding Insult to Imagery? Artistic Responses to Censorship and Mass-Media" exhibition opened in January 16, 2006, Kipp Gallery on the Indiana University of Pennsylvania campus. Eleven gallery-based works, 9 videos, and 10 web-based artworks comprised the show; each dealt with the relationship between censorship and mass mediated…

This study reports changes in kindergarten students' understanding of magnets after participating in a series of hands-on, inquiry-based lessons. The lessons focused on the dipole nature of magnets and employed a visual representation of a magnet as an arrow for the kindergarten students. This dipole model was used to describe how magnets interact…

In this article, we discuss whiteboard math movies (a.k.a. mathcasts) and their applications to mathematics education. A whiteboard math (wbm) movie is a screen recording of writing plus voice and/or text explaining a mathematical concept or solving a problem. The movie is then produced to Flash movie format and distributed via CD or Internet. The…

Developmental dyslexia is defined as a disorder of learning to read. It is thus critical to examine the neural processes that impair learning to read during the early phase of reading acquisition, before compensatory mechanisms are adapted by older readers with dyslexia. Using electroencephalography-based event-related imaging, we investigated how…

This study examines preschoolers' causal assumptions about spatial contiguity and how these assumptions interact with new evidence in the form of conditional probabilities. Preschoolers saw a toy that activated in the presence of certain objects. Children were shown evidence for the toy's activation rule in the form of patterns of probability: The…

The development of language and literacy is the foundation for all other learning. This statement is the guiding philosophy at the Iowa School for the Deaf (ISD). Teachers at ISD believe that intensive, highly structured early intervention and education work best to support cognitive and communication development in their students. However, little…

As certain areas of practice in higher education shift online, the work of learners and teachers increasingly takes place within the domain of the image. The "digital turn" we are experiencing, both in higher education and in the wider culture, accompanies an "iconic turn" in which the logic of the image as it emerges on our screens has a growing…

By definition children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) experience difficulty understanding and using language. Accordingly, visual and picture-based strategies such as the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) show promise in ameliorating speech and language deficits. This study reports the results of a multiple baseline across…