The number of people diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease (AD), a progressive and terminal kind of dementia, continues to rise with an estimated 14 million Americans affected by 2050. Prior to an AD diagnosis, many individuals are diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and have similar, but less severe, symptoms as those with AD. A common…

Two leading theories regarding the neurocognitive basis of attentional disorders are the executive dysfunction theory and the state regulation theory. The executive dysfunction theory takes a top-down approach, explaining the symptoms of ADHD as a byproduct of general deficits in executive functioning--particularly disinhibition. The state…

Despite a 100-year-old history and the existence of schools in nearly every country in the world, Waldorf education is a little known and poorly understood educational model that was developed in Europe by Austrian philosopher Rudolph Steiner. For many years it existed in the United States in the form of private schools. Few of their teachers or…

The present study examines instructional approaches and cognitive factors involved in elementary school children's thinking and learning the Control of Variables Strategy (CVS), a critical aspect of scientific reasoning. Previous research has identified several features related to effective instruction of CVS, including using a guided learning…

Reading comprehension is a complex interactional process whereby the accumulated meaning of sounds, words, and sentences is integrated to form a meaningful representation of text. It is well established that many individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have reading comprehension difficulties, but less is understood about the underlying…

This study introduces an innovative instructional method, called "pseudo peer diagram" (PPD), where students employ executive skills to compare and contrast their work with others' as a formative feedback mechanism. The focus of this study is how students compare and contrast their own diagrams with the pseudo peer diagrams as a stimulus…

Middle school is a critical period in the cognitive and academic development of young women, and a time when their performance and interest in science may decline. After school programs play a key role in engaging youth in learning by providing opportunities to increase health and wellness, set goals, and strategize problem solving. Skills…

The effect of physical activity (PA) and consequent influence on cognition within adult seniors has been widely published. However, there is a paucity of causal research relating PA and cognition to schoolchildren within an authentic setting. Also, little is known about the required intensity and dosage of PA to effect executive function (EF)…

Children's media comprehension was compared for material presented on television, computer, or touchscreen tablet. One hundred and thirty-two children were equally distributed across 12 groups defined by age (4- or 6-years-olds), gender, and the three media platforms. Executive functioning as measured by attentional control, cognitive…

Prior research has established an executive function advantage among bilinguals as compared to monolingual peers. These non-linguistic cognitive advantages are largely assumed to result from the experience of managing two linguistic systems. However, the possibility remains that the relationship between bilingualism and executive function is…

This study investigated some of the underlying factors that may relate to and predict the reading comprehension of children in fourth through eighth grade (N = 47). A subset of these children previously had been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASD; n = 10); the remainder are classified as typically-developing (n = 37). The participants…

This study explored the relationship between verbal fluency skills and writing skills in developing writers. There were three research questions addressed: (1) Was there a difference between fifth-grade students who have a learning disability (LD) in written language and fifth-grade students with typical development (TD) on the Delis-Kaplan…