Speech is more difficult to understand when it is presented concurrently with a distractor speech stream. One source of this difficulty is that competing speech can act as an attentional lure, requiring listeners to exert attentional control to ensure that attention does not drift away from the target. Stronger attentional control may enable…

This study aimed to examine the impact of a universal, school-based intervention, the Good Behavior Game (GBG), on children's behavior, and to explore any subgroup moderator effects among children at varying levels of cumulative risk (CR) exposure. A 2-year cluster-randomized controlled trial was conducted comprising 77 primary schools in England.…

This study explores the effects of immersive VR on an individual's creativity and factors related to creativity including flow, attention and meditation (i.e., mental relaxation or stress). Sixty undergraduate students were invited to participate in an open-ended challenge to design a wearable technology functioning as a smart phone individually,…

The potential benefits of meditation exercises to promote more focused student attention and engagement have only rarely been quantitatively investigated at the college/university level. Here, I report student perceptions on the impacts of regular short mind-calming exercises at the beginning of every class in second, third, and fourth-year…

Background: Fathers are increasingly acknowledged as active participants in rearing young children, yet few observational measures recognize gender-differentiated parenting and can be used by practitioners and researchers to assess and improve fathers' parenting capacity in playful settings, in order to inform program effectiveness. Two potential…

The purpose of this study was to investigate student attention lapses in second language classrooms at the university level. In 17 classes, 274 undergraduate students reported the frequency and duration of their attention lapses during 50- and 75-minute classes at various levels. Students' beliefs regarding their attention and the pedagogical…

Inability to acquire a new motor skill is a common motor difficulty in children with autism spectrum disorder. The purpose of this study is to examine whether the motor learning benefits of an external focus of attention for typically developing children and children with intellectual disabilities could also be applied to children with autism…

Purpose: This study compared attention control and flexibility in school-age children who stutter (CWS) and children who do not stutter (CWNS) based on their performance on a behavioral task and parent report. We used a classic attention-shifting paradigm that included manipulations of task goals and timing to test effects of varying demands for…

Research Findings: This study used the Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF) to examine barriers to teachers implementation of a supplemental academic language curricula. Despite high satisfaction with this scripted curriculum, three past studies indicated heterogeneity in teachers fidelity of implementing the curriculum as well as difficulty going…

Growing evidence demonstrates associations between child race, teacher-child race match, and teacher ratings of externalizing behaviour problems in the early years of school. The present study deepens understanding of the relations between child, teacher, and classroom racial factors and teacher-reported externalizing behaviours by examining…

Mathematical giftedness (MG) is an intriguing phenomenon, the nature of which has yet to be sufficiently explored. This study goes a step further in understanding how MG is related to expertise in mathematics (EM) and general giftedness (G). Cognitive testing was conducted among 197 high school students with different levels of G and of EM. Based…

Anticipation Guides (AGs) help learners to activate prior knowledge before an instructional unit. As a pre-learning strategy, AGs motivate learners to explore learning materials by challenging, activating, or corroborating their prior knowledge and predictions about a subject. While AGs have mostly been used in reading instruction, in this study,…

The authors propose an integrative theoretical model of reading called the direct and indirect effects model of reading (DIER) that builds on and extends several prominent theoretical models of reading. According to DIER, the following skills and knowledge are involved in reading comprehension: word reading, listening comprehension, text reading…

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to explore how teachers describe ways they use movement in the classroom in order to discover benefits and limitations of using movement breaks when working with SPED students in two charter schools on the East Coast of the United States. The brain-based learning theory was used to explore how…

There is debate whether social impairments in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are truly domain-specific, or if they reflect generalized deficits in lower-level cognitive processes. To solve this issue, we used auditory-evoked EEG responses to assess novelty detection (MMN component) and involuntary attentional orientation (P3 component) induced by…