Playful learning with sound-augmented toys: a comparison between children with and without visual impairments.

Sound-augmented toys producing factual knowledge were thought to encourage incidental, playful learning in children with visual impairments (VIs). A group of15 children with VIs and 22 sighted controls played with a sound-augmented savannah landscape and listened to an informative story in a counterbalanced order. Children's knowledge about savannah animals was assessed at baseline and after each condition in order to quantitatively compare knowledge gains between conditions.Results indicated that children with VIs gained more knowledge than sighted controls from playing with the sound-augmented toy. Furthermore, offering both the augmented toy and the informative story led to higher knowledge gains than a single medium, especially in children with VIs. Sound-augmented toys could therefore be a useful addition to the current curriculum in special education for children with VIs

Radboud Sensis program for language, speech, and communication in children with visual impairment

Abstract. The Radboud Sensis program is intended to promote language, speech, and communication in children with visual impairments and their caregivers. Starting-point has been that such an intervention program can be a useful tool, not only for language and communication itself, but also for attachment, social and cognitive development. The program is directed at caregivers of children with visual impairment or blindness until 5 years of age. Goal is to improve their skills and knowledge. The program consists of verbal and written information, exercises, and homework. Topics are: basic communication skills, recognizing (pre)intentional behavior; adapting to child's developmental level and interest, communicating about emotions and affect; choosing communication subjects; using adequate referential language; and asking good questions. The development of the instrument is described as well as the results of a field test with four families. The field test concerned procedural issues and satisfaction. The times needed to prepare and conduct the program and homework was as expected and proved not to be a burden for the parents. Parents were satisfied with the program's content but requested more examples of best practice and some extra exercises. Basic communication skills and recognizing (pre)intentional behavior were rated as most important, adapting to life experiences and developmental level as least important. However video recordings showed that parents miss opportunities to perform the latter

Hierarchical regression analyses predicting well-being from mixed friendship quality and offline friendship quality.

<p>* <i>p</i><.05, ** <i>p</i><.01.</p

The internal consistency, items and factors measuring friendship quality.

<p>*The original item from Parks and Floyd (1996) is: “We have introduced (face-to-face or otherwise) each other to members of each other's circle of friends and family”. To avoid possible confusion regarding ‘online friends’, it was decided to delete ‘face-to-face or otherwise’ from the sentence.</p

Descriptives of main variables divided by country and hearing status.

<p>* <i>p</i><.05; a =  country difference, c =  country_hearing status interaction</p

Hierarchical regression analyses predicting online, mixed and offline friendship quality from computer use with friend.

<p>* <i>p</i><.05, ** <i>p</i><.01</p

Percentages of students' motives to have a social network site divided by country and hearing status.

<p>* <i>p</i><.05; a =  country difference, b =  hearing status difference, c =  country_hearing status interaction</p

Benefits of Sign Language Interpreting and Text Alternatives for Deaf Students' Classroom Learning

Contains fulltext : 56859.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access)17 p

The Tactual Profile: Development of a procedure to assess the tactual functioning of children who are blind

Contains fulltext : 77264.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access)The Tactual Profile assesses tactual functioning of children with severe visual impairments between 0 and 16 years of age. The Tactual Profile consists of 430 items, measuring tactile skills required for performing everyday tasks at home and in school. Items are graded according to age level and divided into three domains: tactual sensory, tactual motor and tactual perceptual. The development of the instrument is described and the psychometric properties that were studied reported. Most items had an acceptable difficulty level, and test—retest reliability proved to be good. The analyses for the construct validity showed moderately high correlations between the Tactual Profile and intelligence tests. These correlations were higher for the haptic performance subtests than for the verbal tests. High correlations with other haptic tests were found. However, these associations disappeared after factoring out intelligence, possibly because current methods for examining tactual functioning are strongly affected by intelligence. A summary of work planned in further development of the procedure is provided