This research focuses on the educational and daily life of a gifted individual with albinism. The purpose of this current research was to determine the difficulties faced by this twice-exceptional individual in his education life and how these difficulties have been overcome. The study has been conducted by narrative study design of the…

Reasoning about visual representations in science requires the ability to control one's attention, inhibit attention to irrelevant or incorrect information, and hold information in mind while manipulating it actively--all aspects of the limited capacity cognitive system described as humans' Executive Functions (EFs) (see Diamond, 2002). This…

The Broad autism phenotype (BAP) refers to a set of subclinical behavioural characteristics qualitatively similar to those presented in Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). The BAP questionnaire (BAPQ) has been widely used to assess the BAP both in relatives of ASD people and within the general population. The current study presents the first Spanish…

The reported project-based laboratory unit introduces upper-division undergraduate students to the basics of computer-aided drug discovery as a part of a computational chemistry laboratory course. The students learn to perform model binding of organic molecules (ligands) to the DNA minor groove with computer-aided drug discovery (CADD) tools. The…

The nature of neurochemical changes in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) remains controversial. We compared medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) neurochemistry of twenty high-functioning children and adolescents with ASD without associated comorbidities and fourteen controls. We observed reduced total N-acetylaspartate (tNAA) and total creatine, increased…

Phylogenetic trees have become increasingly important across the life sciences, and as a result, learning to interpret and reason from these diagrams is now an essential component of biology education. Unfortunately, students often struggle to understand phylogenetic trees. Style (i.e., diagonal or bracket) is one factor that has been observed to…

Teachers have a crucial role to play in raising future generations of citizens who are aware of issues in genetics literacy such as gene therapy, cloning, and stem cell research. Teachers' teaching practices are influenced by their knowledge in genetics literacy and their attitudes towards different issues. Accordingly, this study explored the…

Seemingly small reading delays in early childhood have the potential to compound into more considerable reading difficulties later in childhood (Bast & Reitsma, 1998; Foster & Miller, 2007). Children growing up in at-risk households are especially vulnerable to falling behind in reading. The objective of this study was to explore the…

Self-injurious and aggressive behaviors are common in fragile X syndrome (FXS). However, little is known about the persistence of these behaviors and associated risk markers. We established the prevalence and persistence of self-injurious and aggressive behaviors over eight years in males with FXS, and associations with risk markers. Results…

Purpose: Children with poor language tend to have worse psychosocial outcomes compared to their typically developing peers. The most common explanations for such adversities focus on developmental psychological processes whereby poor language triggers psychosocial difficulties. Here, we investigate the possibility of shared biological effects by…

This article focuses on students' discursive moves and reasoning practices while engaged in a task that requires making explanatory links between sickle cell disease and malaria. Both diseases pertain to key areas of the biology curriculum, namely, genetic variability and natural selection, and are connected to the theory of evolution of living…

This paper highlights learning supports associated with genetics lessons that were implemented in a urban high school biology classroom. The supports provided access to science content for ELLs [English language learners], students with IEPs [individualized education programs], and struggling readers during an introductory unit on genetics. Due to…

We conducted the first needs assessment study by examining the information needs in genetic testing for autism spectrum disorders among parents of children with autism spectrum disorders in Taiwan. Parents of children with autism spectrum disorders in 236 public elementary schools with special education services were invited to complete a survey.…

Understanding student ideas in large-enrollment biology courses can be challenging, because easy-to-administer multiple-choice questions frequently do not fully capture the diversity of student ideas. As part of the Automated Analysis of Constructed Responses (AACR) project, we designed a question prompting students to describe the possible…

Classroom observation protocols can provide an exceedingly rich form of data. However, this is a double-edged sword, as researchers often struggle to take full advantage of the detailed data outputs. In this essay, we introduce a new approach to the analysis of classroom observation data, termed "classroom as genome" (CAG). We illustrate…