As a basic indicator of verbal ability, verbal fluency refers to the degree of fluency in the use of language to convey information. The different components of working memory play an important role in verbal fluency. The inhibiting control mechanism takes place during L2 production processing in bilinguals, which may affect their verbal fluency…

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often find it difficult to communicate using body language and facial expressions to respond appropriately socially. This negatively affects the quality of their everyday social life. Children with ASD can learn to socially interact with virtual three-dimensional (3D) characters in animated games…

Although people with autism are protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, there is little theoretical or practical effort to determine whether traditional pre-employment assessments unfairly impact autistic job seekers. Due to the lack of emphasis on social communication, game-based assessments (GBAs) may offer a way of…

This study investigated the unique contribution of orthographic awareness, letter knowledge, and patterning skills to early literacy and arithmetic competence. A total of 145 third-year kindergarten (K3) children (M[subscript age]: 73.43 months, SD = 5.36; 70 boys, 48%) from Hong Kong participated in this study. Children were assessed on their…

Background: Key to optimizing Computational Thinking (CT) instruction is a precise understanding of the underlying cognitive skills. Román-González et al. (2017) reported unique contributions of spatial abilities and reasoning, whereas arithmetic was not significantly related to CT. Disentangling the influence of spatial and numerical skills on CT…

We tested a method for solving Bayesian reasoning problems in terms of spatial relations as opposed to mathematical equations. Participants completed Bayesian problems in which they were given a prior probability and two conditional probabilities and were asked to report the posterior odds. After a pretraining phase in which participants completed…

In this article, the authors emphasise the importance of purposeful mathematical discussion and using sequences of connected, cumulative, and challenging tasks in advancing students' spatial reasoning in the early years of schooling.

Purpose: Compared to children with typical development, children with dyslexia, developmental language disorder (DLD), or both often demonstrate working memory deficits. It is unclear how pervasive the deficits are or whether the deficits align with diagnostic category. The purpose of this study was to determine whether different working memory…

The main purpose of our study was to examine whether autonomous training through the use of technologies could be associated with improvements in selective attention, visuospatial short-term memory and visuospatial processing in students with Down Syndrome (DS). In addition, our study aimed to analyse how the improvements in selective attention…

This study challenges an existing controversy, whether there are innate differences in competitiveness between boys and girls in general, and among the gifted in particular, or whether competitiveness is context-sensitive. The specific context examined in the study is that of two pullout weekly enrichment gifted programs: one with single-sex…

Aiming to enhance understanding of visual obstacles inherent in two-dimensional (2-D) sketches used in high school spatial geometry instruction, we propose a measure of visual difficulty based on two attributes of the sketches: potentially misleading geometrical information (PMI) and potentially helpful geometrical information (PHI). The…

Young children's participation has been specifically foregrounded as a pedagogical element within education policy in Wales. However, there is currently little evidence that this policy concerned with participation has been enacted. This research describes an intervention, Spatially Democratic Pedagogy, as a pedagogical approach to foster young…

We explored the potential of a robotics application in education as a measurement tool of child executive functioning skills. Sixty-five kindergarteners received assignments to go through a maze with a programmable robot, the Bee-Bot. Via observation we quantified how they solved these tasks. Their performance was successfully aggregated into a…

Conservation education can be fostered through formal and informal learning. An increasing number of zoological facilities with conservation missions have provided experiential learning venues characterized by self-directed, self-motivated and diversified learning experience integrated with fun and entertainment. In this paper, we develop an…

The development of math reasoning and 3-d mental rotation skills are intertwined. However, it is currently not understood how these cognitive processes develop and interact longitudinally at the within-person level -- either within or across genders. In this study, 553 students (52% girls) were assessed from fifth to seventh grades on 3-d mental…