Background: Psychophysiological measurement of processes related to social behavior may be valuable for research on individual differences and subgroups among children with autism spectrum disorders (Coleman, 1987; Dawson, Klinger, Panagiotides, Lewy, & Castelloe, 1995; Modahl et al., 1998). In particular, recent research and theory suggests that…

Background: Dyslexia is now generally acknowledged to involve difficulties in phonological processing. However, the links between reading difficulties and speech difficulties remain unclear. Method: In the present study, 17 children with speech difficulties between the ages of four and six were compared to children with a family history of…

Successful teaching and learning of chemistry depends partly on correct use of a teaching method whose activities target most learning senses. Though chemistry enhances students' learning of biology, physics and agriculture on which Kenyan industries and prosperity depend, most secondary school students in Kenya perform poorly on the subject. This…

This article derives an updated cost-benefit ratio for the High/Scope Perry Preschool Program, an intensive preschool intervention delivered during the 1960s to at-risk children in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Because children were randomly assigned to the program or a control group, differences in outcomes are probably attributable to program status.…

This study examines whether aural processing of input in a situation of implicit instruction can build a knowledge base that is available for both comprehension and production tasks. Fifty-five Dutch students learned a miniature linguistic system based on Spanish. Three training conditions were compared in which noun-adjective gender agreement was…

This study examined the effects of teacher feedback from Reading Curriculum-Based Measurement (R-CBM) progress results for low-performing students in general education classrooms. Participants included 44 second-grade teachers and 184 students in their low reading groups. After 5 weeks of progress monitoring, teachers in the two experimental…

This article presents a guide that seeks to provide assistance to educational practitioners in evaluating whether an educational intervention is backed by rigorous evidence of effectiveness, and in implementing evidence-based interventions in their schools or classrooms. The guide is organized in four parts: (1) A description of the randomized…

Question-asking is a basic skill, required for the development of scientific thinking. However, the way in which science lessons are conducted does not usually stimulate question-asking by students. To make students more familiar with the scientific inquiry process, we developed a curriculum in developmental biology based on research papers…

This pilot study explores the use of Internet Relay Chat facilities such as ICQ in an independent-use mode, as a vehicle for potential English language enhancement. In a small-scale study, a number of Hong Kong secondary school students (Grades 7-10) agreed to participate in an on-line "chatting" programme (in a text-only mode) for a minimum of 20…

Access to the textual world of academia requires that learners are familiar with the critical open-ended questioning stance demanded by textuality. Anecdotal evidence suggests that learners registered for the Bachelor of Education Honours degree are unable to generate appropriate questions to interrogate academic text, impacting on their ability…

The authors assessed the extent to which a generative prereading activity known as Story Impressions (SI), or composing a guess from clues, influences passage recall relative to a more passive prereading activity of reading a Content Preview (CP). The results from 74 eighth-grade students indicated the CP groups equaled the reading-only control…

A 12-week retention program designed to assist at-risk students with test-taking, study and career skills through individual and group counseling was examined. Sixty-nine percent of the program participants attained a cumulative GPA [greater than or equal] 2.0 by the end of the intervention compared to 43% of the control group. Further, 55% of the…

Reduced verbal working memory capacity has been proposed as a possible account of language impairments in specific language impairment (SLI). Studies have shown, however, that differences in strength of linguistic representations in the form of word frequency affect list recall and performance on verbal working memory tasks. This suggests that…

This study reports two different experiments, as a part of a longitudinal study, that evaluated a cognitive intervention (PREP: PASS Reading Enhancement Program) to enhance early phonological processing skills, such as odd-word-out, segmenting, and blending, to kindergarten children at-risk for reading difficulties, in order to support the…

Individual differences in academic success were investigated in a geographically defined whole-population sample of very preterm children with a gestational age of less than 32 weeks or a birth weight of less than 1500 gm. The sample consisted of 264 very preterm children (75.6% of German-speaking survivors) and 264 controls matched for gender,…