Positive outcome with neurofeedback treatment in a case of child with mild Autism Spectrum Disorder

Autism is a neurological disorder characterized by a lack of appropriate eye contact, facial expression, social interaction, communication, and restricted repetitive behavior. Autism Spectrum Disorder represents a group of disorders, including Autism, PDD-NOS, Rett's Disorder, Child Disintegrative Disorder and Asperger?s Disorder (American Psychiatric Association, 1994). According to DSM-IV-TR (APA, 2000), qualitative impairments in social interaction is one of the defining characteristics for the diagnosis of Autistic Disorder. Social impairments can include: lack of use of nonverbal behaviors such as eye gaze, gestures, body postures and facial expressions; lack of social-emotional reciprocity; impairment in expression of pleasure in the happiness of others; and a lack of interaction with peers, including an absence of symbolic or imaginative play activities (APA, 2000). This core impairment has led some to identify social deficits as the “heart” of Autism Spectrum Disorders (Gutstein, 2005)

Lexical Properties and Early Literacy Acquisition of Kindergarten Children in Malay Orthography

Cross-linguistic studies show that complexity and regularities of orthographies will affect the decoding and spelling acquisition rate of the language. However, very little research examines the lexical properties and their relationship with literacy acquisition in Malay, a transparent alphabetic orthography. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the relationship between the lexical and sub-lexical qualities in Malay words and kindergarten children’s decoding and spelling acquisition. The study involved Malay native speaker kindergarten children from an urban city in West Malaysia. The results converged with previous studies on consistent and shallow orthographies but offered an alternative perspective on the contribution of sub-lexical properties in Malay orthography in relation to kindergarten children’s literacy acquisition. Pedagogical implication for the design of an early literacy intervention programme was discussed, highlighting a combination of a coarse-grained and fine-grained approach in teaching the multisyllabic language with salient syllable structure. Keywords: Malay orthography, Early literacy development, Decoding, Spelling, Lexical Propert

The role of working memory in academic achievement

Extensive scientific studies in human cognitive psychology have led to further investigation of short term memory with the introduction of working memory. The aim purpose of this conceptual paper is to define working memory and its association with cognitive activities as well as its influence on domain specific activities in academic disciplines

Critical thinking skills in early years

Learning to think critically set a good foundation for good thinking development in younger children. The preschool years have to be liable to incorporate strategies and develop appropriates practices of critical thinking into the classroom. However, teaching critical thinking has not been a simple task. The purpose of the research study attempts to identify critical and creative thinking among kindergarten children. In the name of this purpose the ideas are taken from the teacher candidates who teach in kindergarten level. In the study four preschool teacher candidates take part in. To get the teachers’ ideas, in the research a form is applied consisting of 19 open-ended questions was directed to the teachers and principal in a kindergarten. The frequencies of the teacher candidates’ opinions are taken by coding with the content analysis. Looking into the results of the research it is stated that teachers declare that insufficient sources of critical thinking develop in students and teachers have shallow understanding of critical thinking skills. This proposed study is expected to benefit to the education society in order to enrich young children’s capacity and skills to think critically and creatively

Working memory in children with down syndrome

Down syndrome, characterized by cognitive impairment, a number of physical characteristics such as small chin, slanted eyes, poor muscle tone, and a flat nasal bridge, Mongoloid- like facial and multiple deformities. The Down Syndrome (DS) or Trisomy 21 is a common chromosome disorder which has an extra chromosome on the 21st pair resulted in impairments and limitations in developmental abilities and physical growth as compared to normal children. Roughly, 1 in 700 to 800 live births (Sherman et al., 2007; Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, 2006) in western countries showed the incidence of Down syndrome while the total number of worldwide is more than 200,000 cases per year (Christianson et al., 2006). A survey conducted in a Maternity Hospital, Kuala Lumpur showed that the incidence of Down syndrome was 1:959 live births. The incidence of this chromosome disorder within the three major ethnics in Malaysia is 1:987 in Malay, 1:940 in Chinese and 1;860 in Indian(Hoe et al., 1989). Most individuals with Down syndrome have an IQ ranging from mild (IQ 50-70) to moderate (IQ 35-50) (Naess et al., 2011) and they are believed to be slow learners. Since it is commonly associated with mental retardation, impairments in the growth of cognitive development are inevitable

Approaches to learning and academic achievement in higher education

An approach to learning concerns the dynamic way in which individuals relate to and organise a learning task, and is influenced by prior experiences and perceptions of the requirements of the learning context (Ramsden, 1987). The concept of learning approaches came from Marton and Säljö (1979) based on their seminal work on 30 graduate students at the University of Götenburg in Sweden. The students were interviewed after completing a reading task and questions were asked about the text as well as about the way in which they completed the task. The responses to the questions suggested a variety of differences in the way the students acquired and processed the information. While some students focussed on the intention of the authors and tried to identify the principle ideas (content), others tried to memorise as much as possible and often recalled the examples (signs) cited by the authors rather than the main ideas. The former was seen as a product of deep-level processing and the students had adopted a holistic approach to their activity whereas the latter was a result of surface-level processing and the students had an atomistic approach to the task

Working Memory and Behavioural Problems in Relation to Malay Writing of Primary School Children

Deficit in working memory is common among young children across multiple abilities. Teachers have pointed to poor memory as one contributing factor to inattentiveness and short attention spans as well as some behavioural problems among students. This study aimed to explore the relationship among working memory, externalizing and internalizing behavioural problems and Malay language (writing). A total of 469 children (aged 8 and 11 year-old) and 17 school teachers were involved in the current study. It was found that working memory, externalizing behavioural problems and internalizing behavioural problems played critical roles in affecting the scores of Malay language (writing) at school. Specifically, there were five predictor variables being found in the regression model namely verbal short-term memory, inattention, somatic complaints, visuospatial working memory and aggression. As a whole, the correlation for the fivefactor model yielded a great result of 0.987

A systematic review of parental attitude and preferences towards implementation of sexuality education

Parents play a unique role in providing and facilitating their children in acquirement of sexual and reproductive health knowledge. The purpose of this study is to provide an overview of parents’ attitude, preferences towards sexuality education (SE) and factors that contributed to their attitudes and perceptions based on review of relevant literature. The articles were retrieved via electronic databases, and manually examined to identify the studies that addressed the research questions. There were 29 studies with a total of 22,213 parents involved which published in peer-reviewed journals between the year 2000 and 2018 were selected and reviewed systematically. The findings emerged from the review were categorized into three main themes which included parental attitudes, parental preferences towards the implementation of SE and the factors contributed to their attitudes and perceptions. Most studies revealed that parents showed positive attitudes and support the inclusion of SE in school. They preferred age-appropriated SE to be introduced in elementary schools and secondary schools. Some parents supported SE which is aligned with religious teaching and cultural. Demographic factors, parents’ sexuality knowledge, religious and cultural factors could affect parental attitudes and perceptions towards SE. This understanding could be useful for policymakers and educators to encourage collaboration with parents to strengthen the effectiveness of the program and scale up SE to benefit the young generation

IRANIAN STUDENTS' PERCEPTIONS ON POETRY READING STRATEGIES

Poetry for teaching English is widely adopted but understanding poetry is problematic. Reading strategies can address this problem. Therefore, in this research, the most common strategies that Iranian post-graduate students perceive that they use were studied. This study adopted the quantitative method design in data analysis. The instrument for data collection is a questionnaire (Survey of Poetry Reading Strategies or SPRS). The participants were selected based on convenience random sampling. Sixty participants took part in the quantitative data collection. Results from the questionnaire showed use of Problem Solving strategies such as re-reading was perceived to be used more often than Global strategies such as making judgment and opinion and Support strategies such as analysing and evaluating. This study contributes the useful reading strategies in reading poetry by Iranian students. These results can be useful for both students and teachers in reading poetry.  Article visualizations

Breastfeeding education in term of knowledge and attitude through mother support group

Knowledge and attitude are important factors for successful breastfeeding practice. The objective of this study was to examine the influence of knowledge and attitude on breastfeeding among Indonesian mothers who joined mother support group (MSG) program. This was a community based cross-sectional study. There were 221 mothers participated on this study. Multiple regression was used to asses the influence of knowledge and attitude on breastfeeding. Result of the study showed that knowledge and attitude influence breastfeeding practice