Children with autism spectrum disorder experience delays in the development of nonverbal social communication gestures to request and to share (joint attention) as well as play skills such that intervention is required. Although such tools exist in research settings, community stakeholders also require access to brief, simple, and reliable tools…

In this article, we investigate 'no touch policies' as a practical teacher concern that includes the body as a location, a source and a means in educational activity. We argue that to understand issues regarding physical touch within school practice we must conceive it as deeply associated with specific teaching techniques. Thus, the didactical…

The article investigates how nurturing touch practices, such as gentle brush massage, finger massage and body massage, are applied in 10 Danish toddlers' early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings. Thirteen practitioners contributed to the study with written narratives on their experiences with nurturing touch practices and how they…

The purpose of this study was to determine how students, teachers, and outside observers perceive teaching effectiveness within a university-level string ensemble rehearsal setting. Students, teachers, and observers reflected on six rehearsal segments that used primarily nonverbal, co-verbal, or verbal instruction as outlined by Bob Culver in the…

The eye-tracking experiment was carried out to assess fixation duration and scan paths that individuals with and without high-functioning autism spectrum disorders employed when identifying simple and complex emotions. Participants viewed human photos of facial expressions and decided on the identification of emotion, the negative-positive emotion…

Through a study of collaborative writing at a student advocacy nonprofit, this article explores how writers distribute their text planning across tools, artifacts, and gestures, with a particular focus on how embodied representations of texts are present in text planning. Findings indicate that these and other representations generated by the…

Title: What are the observable correlates of the Aha! moment, and how does this moment relate to moving from surface to deep thinking? Background: The purpose of this study is to provide reliable evidence of the observable correlates of the Aha! moment and what this means for moving from surface to deep thinking. This research can lead to the…

This study disentangled the influences of language and social processing on communication in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) by examining whether gesture and speech production differs as a function of social context. The results indicate that, unlike other adolescents, adolescents with ASD did not increase their coherency and engagement in the…

Purpose: This study investigated the communicative use of eye gaze and gestures in females with Rett syndrome. Method: Data on 151 females with Rett syndrome participating in the Australian Rett Syndrome Database was used in this study. Items from the Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scales Developmental Profile Infant-Toddler Checklist…

Research on early false belief understanding has entirely relied on affect-neutral measures such as judgments (standard tasks), attentional allocation (looking duration, preferential looking, anticipatory looking), or active intervention. We used a novel, affective measure to test whether preschoolers affectively anticipate another's misguided…

We tested the effectiveness of a tablet application and differential reinforcement to increase eye contact in 3 children with autism. The application required the child to look at a picture of a person's face and identify the number displayed in the person's eyes. Eye contact was assessed immediately after training, 1 hr after training, and in a…

Purpose: This paper examines the impact of communication technology and human-related factors on teacher, student and course performance, in particular on teacher's clarity, perceived value of the course and student learning. Design/methodology/approach: Communication technology factors are analyzed in terms of social media use, while…

The Hidden Village (THV) is a motion-capture video game for investigating how physical movements foster mathematical thinking and proof practices based on principles of embodied cognition. Analysis of the interactions of students in an all-Limited English Proficiency Title 1 high school geometry classroom revealed ways simulated enactment and…

Using a phenomenological study of educational games, this article describes how computer-based digital tools were used to simultaneously record computer applications (such as games), voice and sounds, participant facial expressions, and gestures to enliven phenomenological interviews and provide rich, thickly described data. In a study,…

Previous work has demonstrated that social attention is related to early language abilities. We explored whether we can facilitate word learning among children with autism by directing attention to areas of the scene that have been demonstrated as relevant for successful word learning. We tracked eye movements to faces and objects while children…