Educational neuroscience: progress and prospects

Educational neuroscience is an interdisciplinary research field that seeks to translate research findings on neural mechanisms of learning to educational practice and policy, and to understand the effects of education on the brain. Neuroscience and education can interact directly, by virtue of considering the brain as a biological organ that needs to be in the optimal condition to learn (‘brain health’); or indirectly, as neuroscience shapes psychological theory and psychology influences education. In this article, we trace the origins of educational neuroscience, its main areas of research activity, and the principal challenges it faces as a translational field. We consider how a pure psychology approach that ignores neuroscience is at risk of being misleading for educators. We address the major criticisms of the field, respectively comprising a priori arguments against the relevance of neuroscience to education, reservations with the current practical operation of the field, and doubts about the viability of neuroscience methods for diagnosing disorders or predicting individual differences. We consider future prospects of the field and ethical issues it raises. Finally, we discuss the challenge of responding to the (welcome) desire of education policymakers to include neuroscience evidence in their policymaking, while ensuring recommendations do not exceed the limitations of current basic science

Developmental trajectories in genetic disorders

Book synopsis: This special issue is among the first volumes to examine the topic of early development in children with neurogenetic disorders associated with intellectual disability. It includes discussions of theoretical issues regarding the emergence of behavioural profiles during early development, as well as comprehensive accounts of early development in specific disorders such as Down syndrome, fragile X syndrome, Williams syndrome, and sex chromosome disorders. In addition, several contributions examine the latest clinical applications of this work for diagnosis, treatment, and education

Visual Speech Perception in Children With Language Learning Impairments

Purpose - The purpose of the study was to assess the ability of children with developmental language learning impairments (LLIs) to use visual speech cues from the talking face. Method - In this cross-sectional study, 41 typically developing children (mean age: 8 years 0 months, range: 4 years 5 months to 11 years 10 months) and 27 children with diagnosed LLI (mean age: 8 years 10 months, range: 5 years 2 months to 11 years 6 months) completed a silent speechreading task and a speech-in-noise task with and without visual support from the talking face. The speech-in-noise task involved the identification of a target word in a carrier sentence with a single competing speaker as a masker. Results - Children in the LLI group showed a deficit in speechreading when compared with their typically developing peers. Beyond the single-word level, this deficit became more apparent in older children. On the speech-in-noise task, a substantial benefit of visual cues was found regardless of age or group membership, although the LLI group showed an overall developmental delay in speech perception. Conclusion - Although children with LLI were less accurate than their peers on the speechreading and speech-in noise-tasks, both groups were able to make equivalent use of visual cues to boost performance accuracy when listening in noise

Variability in the severity of developmental disorders: a neurocomputational account of developmental regression in autism

Book synopsis: This volume collects together most of the papers presented at the Twelfth Neural Computation and Psychology Workshop (NCPW12) held in 2010 at Birkbeck College (England). The conference invited submissions on neurocomputational models of all cognitive and psychological processes. The special theme of this conference was “From Theory to Applications”, which allowed submissions of pure theoretical work and of pure applied work. This topic extended the boundaries of the conference and highlighted the extent to which computational models of cognition and models in general are integrated in the cognitive sciences. The chapters in this book cover a wide range of research topics in neural computation and psychology, including cognitive development, language processing, higher-level cognition, but also ecology-based modeling of cognition, philosophy of science, and real-world applications