We present a neural network model of referent identification in a visual world task. Inputs are visual representations of item pairs unfolding with sequences of phonemes identifying the target item. The model is trained to output the semantic representation of the target and to suppress the distractor. The training set uses a 200-word lexicon…

Children with complex communication needs often have multiple disabilities including visual impairments that impact their ability to interact with aided augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems. Just as the field benefited from a consideration of visual cognitive neuroscience in construction of visual displays, an exploration of…

The Conference at the University of Oviedo, Spain, within the 44th Annual Meeting of the International Academy for Research in Learning Disabilities, was an excellent opportunity to share knowledge, explore perspectives and reflect on the study of neurodevelopmental disorders in Europe and elsewhere in the world. The William M. Cruickshank…

Art therapy can be particularly successful in addressing the specific needs of individuals struggling with anorexia nervosa (AN) through the use of the creative process. This article provides an understanding of the effect of malnourishment on the brain for individuals with AN and discusses how their unique needs can be met through the application…

The honey bee mushroom bodies (MBs) are brain centers required for specific learning tasks. Here, we show that environmental conditions experienced as young adults affect the maturation of MB neuropil and performance in a MB-dependent learning task. Specifically, olfactory reversal learning was selectively impaired following early exposure to an…

Education changes the brain. The purpose of this meta-review is to afford teachers access to the most up-to-date research regarding principal neuro-processes of adolescent development and behavior to improve students' well-being and motivation in the classroom. This includes facets such as emotional, social, risk and reward mechanisms, stressors,…

Infants who stay in emergency shelters with their families are most likely to demonstrate resilience despite homelessness if they experience positive, nurturing relationships with their parents. We discuss the strengths and challenges of infants experiencing family homelessness as well as intervention and research evaluation in those contexts.…

The brain is a complex organ with an intellectual capacity that is unique to humans. For educators, it is wise to study the brain's many attributes and how it functions to help guide, inform, and improve teaching practice. Learners' brains are particularly sensitive to certain kinds of stimuli--that is social, physical, cognitive, and emotional…

This article describes the use of collaborative fabric collage based on a neurodevelopmental adaptation for an adult who was being treated for trauma. The case demonstrates the value of thinking about neurodevelopmental factors when creating art therapy interventions. A biologically respectful treatment that offers relational, relevant,…

Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), sometimes referred to as concussion, is one of the most common acquired neurological problems of childhood. When children return to school following mTBI, school psychologists should be actively involved in the determination of neurocognitive and functional deficits for the purpose of designing strength-based…

The principles of Hungarian music educator Zoltan Kodaly can be particularly useful not only in teaching children how to read music notation but also in creating curiosity and enjoyment for reading music. Many of Kodaly's ideas pertaining to music literacy have been echoed by educators such as Jerome Bruner and Edwin Gordon, as well as current…

Speech recognition is an active process that involves some form of predictive coding. This statement is relatively uncontroversial. What is less clear is the source of the prediction. The dual-stream model of speech processing suggests that there are two possible sources of predictive coding in speech perception: the motor speech system and the…

Our understanding of the neurobiological basis for human speech production and perception has benefited from insights from psychology, neuropsychology and neurology. In this overview, I outline some of the ways that functional imaging has added to this knowledge and argue that, as a neuroanatomical tool, functional imaging has led to some…

Obesity has become a true pandemic. In the United States, over two thirds of adults are obese or overweight. The prevalence of obesity has doubled since 1980. The increase in the prevalence of obese and overweight individuals has happened too rapidly for it to be due to an alteration in the genome. The gastrointestinal, sensory (taste and…

An extraordinary variety of experimental (e.g., flicker, magnetic fields) and clinical (epilepsy, migraine) conditions give rise to a surprisingly common set of elementary hallucinations, including spots, geometric patterns, and jagged lines, some of which also have color, depth, motion, and texture. Many of these simple hallucinations fall into a…