Private speech in children with ADHD and their typically developing peers during problem-solving and inhibition tasks

This study compared private speech of children with ADHD and normal controls during problem solving and inhibition tasks. Thirty-two children (16 children with ADHD and 16 matched controls) aged 6–11 years participated. Consistent with previous studies, children with ADHD produced more task-irrelevant and task-relevant external private speech than control children during problem-solving tasks, but did not differ in their use of task-relevant internal private speech. During the inhibition/attention task (Continuous Performance Test-II), children with ADHD produced more task-relevant external and more task-relevant internal private speech, suggesting that they may have employed a less mature strategy to aid in self-regulation. The educational implications of the current study are that there should be an increased awareness of the developmental nature and functional significance of private speech and how private speech usage may differ in children with ADHD.     

The mind behind the message: advancing theory-of-mind scales for typically developing children, and those with deafness, autism, or Asperger syndrome

Children aged 3-12 years (n = 184) with typical development, deafness, autism, or Asperger syndrome took a series of theory-of-mind (ToM) tasks to confirm and extend previous developmental scaling evidence. A new sarcasm task, in the format of H. M. Wellman and D. Liu's (2004) 5-step ToM Scale, added a statistically reliable 6th step to the scale for all diagnostic groups. A key previous finding, divergence in task sequencing for children with autism, was confirmed. Comparisons among diagnostic groups, controlling age, and language ability, showed that typical developers mastered the 6 ToM steps ahead of each of the 3 disabled groups, with implications for ToM theories. The final (sarcasm) task challenged even nondisabled 9-year-olds, demonstrating the new scale's sensitivity to post-preschool ToM growth.     

Executive functions and pragmatics in children with high-functioning autism

Children with deficits in executive functions (EFs) and impairments in pragmatic language have a range of cognitive and language difficulties that affect their literacy and educational achievements. As deficits in EFs and pragmatic impairments are characteristics of autism spectrum disorders, this study examined the associations between EFs and pragmatic skills in children with high-functioning autism (HFA). Fifteen children with HFA (5–9 years; M?=?7.44, SD 1.21), matched to 15 typically developing peers on age, gender, and non-verbal intelligence participated in the study. Children completed a pragmatic language assessment protocol, and a rating scale of EFs was administered to parents. Our results point to two main findings: children with HFA presented pragmatic difficulties and EFs impairments when compared with typically developing peers; and, as shown by a significant indirect effect of group on pragmatics via EFs, the poor pragmatics skills of HFA children were associated with their EFs difficulties. These findings may be of clinical relevance for children with pragmatic impairments, such as autism spectrum disorders. Future studies are crucial to further investigate the relationship between impaired pragmatics and EFs.

     

Perceptions of typically developing children in India about their siblings with disabilities

ABSTRACT

In India, people with disabilities often struggle to access various opportunities and resources. As a result of perceptions within the Indian culture around disabilities, families may face social, financial, and emotional difficulties. Within the family, a child with a disability may lead to strained relationships, particularly with siblings. Often siblings have little knowledge about disabilities and may feel ostracised. The purpose of this exploratory study was to examine the knowledge and attitudes of 12 Indian children regarding their siblings with disabilities, including their perceptions about disabilities against the backdrop of societal attitudes. Participants were interviewed to understand their knowledge of their siblings’ disabilities, to examine their sibling relationships, and to assess how school and society influenced their perceptions about disabilities. Results from this study can help family members understand how disability shapes relationships between children. The findings also provide key stakeholders with information that might help them better support families.     

A comparison of social skills in Turkish children with visual impairments,children with intellectual impairments and typically developing children

The purpose of this study was to compare the social skills of five groups of children: children with visual impairments attending inclusive education schools, children with visual impairments attending schools for the blind, children with intellectual impairments attending inclusive education schools, children with intellectual impairments attending segregated special education schools, and typically developing children. A hundred and sixty-nine children aged from 7 to 12 participated in the study. The children's social skills were rated by their teachers on the Social Skills Rating System (SSRS) – Turkish Form. The results suggested significant group differences between children attending inclusive education schools and children attending special education schools. Analysis of the findings indicated that children with visual impairments and children with intellectual impairments had poorer social skills than typically developing children; however children with visual impairments and children with intellectual impairments attending inclusive education schools had higher social skills than children attending segregated special education schools. The findings of the study were discussed and suggestions for future research were provided.     

The neural correlates of working memory training in typically developing children

Working memory training improves children's cognitive performance on untrained tasks; however, little is known about the underlying neural mechanisms. This was investigated in 32 typically developing children aged 10–14 years (19 girls and 13 boys) using a randomized controlled design and multi-modal magnetic resonance imaging (Devon, UK; 2015–2016). Training improved working memory performance and increased intrinsic functional connectivity between the bilateral intraparietal sulci. Furthermore, improvements in working memory were associated with greater recruitment of the left middle frontal gyrus on a complex span task. Repeated engagement of fronto-parietal regions during training may increase their activity and functional connectivity over time, affording greater working memory performance. The plausibility of generalizable cognitive benefits from a neurobiological perspective and implications for neurodevelopmental theory are discussed.     

Fostering communication and shared play between mainstream peers and children with autism: approaches, outcomes and experiences

More pupils with autism are now being educated in mainstream settings and inevitably there is increased interest in their interactions with their peers. In this article, Philip Whitaker, of the Educational Psychology Service in Northamptonshire, describes his study of shared play between children with autism and their mainstream peers. The study involved ten youngsters with severe autism, educated in a unit attached to a mainstream school, and a group of volunteer 'peer tutors'. The children met in weekly interaction sessions designed to promote shared play and communication. The peer tutors were provided with some coaching in interaction techniques and the impact of the intervention was evaluated through analysis of video recordings of play sessions made at the beginning and end of the project. The peer tutors and their parents were also interviewed at the end of the project to explore their experiences.
The results Philip Whitaker reports are encouraging. All parents were strongly supportive of their children's participation. All but one of the peer tutors found the experience challenging but rewarding and wanted to continue their involvement beyond the 20-week project. The video evidence revealed that the peer tutors, with relatively limited preparation, were able to engage the youngsters with autism in high and sustained levels of shared play. The frequency of requesting by children with autism increased substantially over the course of the project, although levels of initiation of shared attention remained consistently low. Philip Whitaker concludes his report with a series of suggestions for enhancing the impact of this interesting work.     

Building alliance for preschool inclusion: Parents of typically developing children,attitudes and perceptions

The current study investigated perceptions, thoughts, and attitudes of parents of typically developing children enrolled in inclusive 3-year-old and 4-year-old preschool classrooms. Using a qualitative approach, guided by ecological system theory semi-structured interviews with parents (N = 7) were completed. Several common themes related to inclusive preschool interactions were identified. Results indicated that parental perspectives, perceptions, and experiences vary. While parents were supportive of inclusion philosophy in child care centers, they felt less confident in their ability to explain the limitations associated with special needs to their young children. Parental support and involvement within inclusive preschool classrooms may be strengthened through the development of educational programs and family–professional partnerships. The role and involvement of teachers in facilitating parental support of inclusion philosophy is also addressed.     

Exploring the development of executive functions in children in a digital world

European Journal of Psychology of Education - Children in many parts of the world spend increasing time using digital devices (tablets, mobile phones etc.). In the present study, the developmental...     

Morpho-lexical development in language impaired and typically developing Hebrew-speaking children from two SES backgrounds

The study investigated the impact of language impairment and environmental deprivation on Hebrew morpho-lexical development across the school years. Participants were 659 grade school and middle school Hebrew-speaking students—typically developing and language impaired, from mid-high and from low socio-economic status (SES). They were all administered three derivational morphology tasks designed to elicit verbs, adjectives and derived abstract nouns. Each response was scored in three different ways: as a whole word, and according to its base (root or stem) and affixal (pattern or suffix) morphemes. Findings revealed three systematic hierarchies. First, the typically developing mid-high SES group always scored the highest, the language impaired low SES group always scored the lowest, while the typically developing low SES and the language impaired mid-high SES groups lay in-between. Second, verbs were the easiest category across all study groups, whilst adjectives and derived abstract nouns proved to be more affected by population type. Third, affixal morpheme always scored lower than base morpheme, with persistent gaps between the typically developing mid-high SES group and all other groups. Altogether, results show that language development is impeded extensively by both language impairment and SES factors, suggesting that in the long run, innate and environmental factors may have similar implications on morpho-lexical development.     

Exploring the views and beliefs of parents of typically developing children about inclusion and inclusive education

Background: The inclusion of pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SENDs) in regular classrooms has been identified as a high priority in many policy documents published by both European and international organisations. Its implementation, however, is influenced by a number of factors, some of which are directly related to the participation and attitudes of different stakeholders, including parents of typically developing children. Parents, as a social group, can act in favour of inclusion or they can support more segregated educational environments.

Purpose: The aim of this study was to explore, in a Greek context, the views and beliefs of parents of typically developing children about different aspects of the education of children with disabilities, with a particular focus on inclusion and inclusive education.

Method: Interviews were held with 40 Greek parents representing 40 typically developing school-aged children who were educated in six different primary education schools, from the broader area of central Greece. All of the children, at the time of the study, were educated in mainstream classes, in which an in-classroom support system was applied. Open-ended interview questions focused on parents’ views and beliefs about the implementation of inclusive educational programmes. Data were analysed according to the principles of an inductive data-driven approach.

Findings: The research findings indicate that most of the participant parents did not feel informed about specific school policy practices relevant to inclusive education; they were not aware of the notion of ‘inclusion’ or approached inclusion from an integrationist point of view. Within this context, they hold positive to neutral attitudes towards inclusion, on the basis that a child with SENDs can cope with the school requirements.

Conclusions: This small-scale, exploratory research study suggests the importance of informing and involving parents of typically developing children in efforts to promote more inclusive practices.     

The role of the executive functions in school readiness among preschool-age children

The aim of this study was to identify the specific contribution of executive functions to pre-academic skills (emergent literacy, phonological awareness and orthographic knowledge, and emergent mathematic knowledge) over and above cognitive and linguistic underpinning abilities such as naming, short-term memory and vocabulary. The study was designed to examine the following questions: (1) Are executive functions related to pre-academics skills in general or are they related to specific pre-academic skills? (2) Does the magnitude of the relationship between executive functions and pre-academics skills change with the progress in pre-school age? 54 children between the ages of 5 and 6 years old from 4 different kindergartens participated in the project. A wide range of pre-academic skills, cognitive, linguistic and executive functions tasks were administered. The results demonstrated that executive functions contributed significantly to both emergent literacy and emergent mathematic knowledge. In addition, the current study also suggests that the role of executive functions increases with the growth of child’s pre-academic development. Finally, the strongest contribution of executive functions was found to orthographic knowledge.     

Contribution of discourse and morphosyntax skills to reading comprehension in Chinese dyslexic and typically developing children

This study aimed at identifying important skills for reading comprehension in Chinese dyslexic children and their typically developing counterparts matched on age (CA controls) or reading level (RL controls). The children were assessed on Chinese reading comprehension, cognitive, and reading-related skills. Results showed that the dyslexic children performed significantly less well than the CA controls but similarly to RL controls in most measures. Results of multiple regression analyses showed that word-level reading-related skills like oral vocabulary and word semantics were found to be strong predictors of reading comprehension among typically developing junior graders and dyslexic readers of senior grades, whereas morphosyntax, a text-level skill, was most predictive for typically developing senior graders. It was concluded that discourse and morphosyntax skills are particularly important for reading comprehension in the non-inflectional and topic-prominent Chinese system.     

Loneliness and friendship in high-functioning children with autism

Loneliness and friendship were examined in 22 high-functioning children with autism and 19 typically developing children equated with the autistic children for IQ, CA, gender, mother's education, and ethnicity. Children between the ages of 8 and 14 were asked to report on both their understanding and feelings of loneliness and the quality of their friendship. Compared to typically developing children, children with autism were both lonelier and had less complete understandings of loneliness. Although all children with autism reported having at least one friend, the quality of their friendships was poorer in terms of companionship, security, and help. Fewer associations were found between loneliness and friendship for the autistic than for the non-autistic children, suggesting less understanding of the relation between loneliness and friendship. Implications of these results are discussed for conceptualizing the social deficits in autism.     

Processing limitations in children with specific language impairment: the role of executive function

Research suggests that children with specific language impairment (SLI) have processing limitations; however, the mechanisms involved have not been well defined or investigated in a theory-guided manner. The theory of constructive operators was used as a framework to explore processes underlying limited processing capacity in children with SLI. Mental attentional capacity, mental attentional interruption, and 2 specific executive functions (shifting and updating) were examined in 45 children with SLI and 45 children with normally developing language, aged 7 to 12 years. The results revealed overall group differences in performance on measures of mental attention, interruption, and updating, but not shifting. The findings supported the premise that mental attention predicted language competence, but that this relationship was mediated partially by updating.     

学龄前儿童睡眠障碍及影响因素分析

学龄前(3—6岁)儿童的睡眠质量与其认知功能中的注意力水平发展密切相关。采用问卷调查和注意力测试,对138名学龄前儿童进行评估,考察其睡眠质量对注意表现的影响及就寝习惯在其中的调节作用。结果显示：学龄前儿童睡眠持续时间、睡眠呼吸问题负向预测注意力水平;睡前时常听家长讲故事,加强了睡眠持续时间对注意力的影响,使儿童更容易从优质睡眠中受益。这一发现为家长合理培养子女的就寝习惯、促进儿童睡眠健康和认知发展提供参考。