This study examined irrelevant/incorrect answers produced by children with Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism (7-9-year-olds and 10-12-year-olds) and normally developing children (7-9-year-olds). The errors produced were divided into three types: in Type 1, the child answered the original question incorrectly, in Type 2, the child gave a…

Private speech used by high-functioning children with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) (n=33) during two executive functioning tasks was compared to that of typically developing children (n=28), and children with ADHD (n=21). Children with ASD were as likely as others to talk to themselves and their speech was similarly relevant and likely to…

Through associative learning, cues for biologically significant reinforcers such as food may gain access to mental representations of those reinforcers. Here, we used devaluation procedures, behavioral assessment of hedonic taste-reactivity responses, and measurement of immediate-early gene (IEG) expression to show that a cue for food engages…

Background: Optimum sequencing of skills so that learners can benefit from the transfer of previous learning is an important issue in teaching and learning of motor skills. There is a lack of empirical evidence on the specificity and transfer of learning and its application to teaching/coaching situations. Purpose: To investigate the concepts of…

This study investigates the combined impact of a memory test and subsequent listening practice in enhancing student listening abilities in collegiate business administration courses. The article reviews relevant literature and describes an exploratory study that was undertaken to compare the effectiveness of this technique with traditional…

The effectiveness of two different laboratory techniques is compared to teach students majoring in science in a general chemistry laboratory. The results demonstrated that student laboratory activities with computer-interface systems could improve student understanding.

The purpose of the study described was to evaluate the effectiveness of a cognitive behavioural intervention for anger management with children diagnosed with Asperger syndrome. Forty-five children and their parents were randomly assigned to either intervention or wait-list control conditions. Children in the intervention participated in six 2-h…

Caregiver use of dialogic reading (DR) strategies in home, preschool, and daycare settings has been shown to facilitate development of oral language and emergent literacy skills in toddlers and preschool age children. Training in the use of DR strategies may be provided "live" or via videotape. Using a randomized, control group, repeated measures…

In September 2005, the National Research Center on Learning Disabilities (NRCLD) sponsored an invitation-only forum to look closely at applying responsiveness to intervention (RTI) to specific learning disabilities (SLD) determination decisions. Thus far, research and school-based practices have perceived RTI as a prevention model focused on…

The present study investigated how anticipation of a target's appearance affects human attention to gaze cues provided by a schematic face. Subjects in a "catch" group received a high number of "catch" trials, in which no target stimulus appeared. Subjects in the control group did not receive any catch trials. As in previous studies, both groups…

A newly developed quantitative near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) system was used to measure changes in cortical hemoglobin oxygenation during the Verbal Fluency Task in 32 healthy controls, 15 subjects with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and 15 patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD). The amplitude of changes in the waveform, which was…

Profile analysis was used to compare the study skills of academically struggling college students to their normal-achieving counter parts using the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory (LASSI; Weinstein & Palmer, 2002). Comparisons were made between: (a) students with high versus low GPAs; (b) students with a documented learning disability…

Looking away from an interlocutor's face during demanding cognitive activity can help adults answer challenging arithmetic and verbal-reasoning questions (Glenberg, Schroeder, & Robertson, 1998). However, such "gaze aversion" (GA) is poorly applied by 5-year-old school children (Doherty-Sneddon, Bruce, Bonner, Longbotham, & Doyle, 2002). In…

The objective of this study was to assess the impact of a training programme, designed to make preschool-age children's invented spelling evolve, on their phonemic awareness. The participants were 90 children who were divided into 3 experimental and 3 control groups based on the nature of their invented spelling. Children's phonemic skills were…

A striking demonstration that sound-object correspondences are not completely arbitrary is that adults map nonsense words with rounded vowels (e.g. bouba) to rounded shapes and nonsense words with unrounded vowels (e.g. kiki) to angular shapes (Kohler, 1947; Ramachandran & Hubbard, 2001). Here we tested the bouba/kiki phenomenon in 2.5-year-old…