In 2004, in response to the need to revise oral practice and assessment in the second semester of Beginners French at Monash University, an eight-week group-based theatre project was developed and trialled. A specially adapted version of Tardieu's absurdist play "Le Guichet" was used to give students the opportunity to focus on oral…

This paper examines the presence of spontaneous imitation within the social interactions of young people with developmental delay and their adult carers. There have been only a handful of observational studies examining imitation in this population, despite the relevance of such work to contemporary theoretical debates about imitation and the…

Performance on an emotional labeling task in response to schematic facial patterns representing five basic emotions without the concurrent presentation of a verbal category was investigated in 40 parents of children with autism and 40 matched controls. "Autism fathers" performed worse than "autism mothers," who performed worse than controls in…

The new paradigm of studying childhood that has emerged in the past 15 years has significant implications for rethinking research with children. This article examines some methodological and ethical issues related to the role and responsibility of a researcher in the process of designing, structuring, and conducting research on childhood…

Cognitive research on metaphoric concepts of time has focused on differences between moving Ego and moving time models, but even more basic is the contrast between Ego- and temporal-reference-point models. Dynamic models appear to be quasi-universal cross-culturally, as does the generalization that in Ego-reference-point models, FUTURE IS IN FRONT…

Background: This study investigated whether processing emotionally salient information such as emotional facial expressions influences the performance on a cognitive control task in pediatric anxiety and depression. Methods: The sample included 68 participants between 8 and 16 years of age selected into three diagnostic groups: Anxiety Disorder…

Sixty-two adults with mental retardation of heterogeneous etiology performed four facial emotion discrimination tasks and two facial nonemotion tasks. Staff members familiar with the participants completed measures of social adjustment (the Socialization and Communication domains of the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales and the Social Performance…

Seance-room and other large-scale psychokinetic phenomena have fascinated humankind for decades. Experimental research has reduced these phenomena to attempts to influence (a) the fall of dice and, later, (b) the output of random number generators (RNGs). The meta-analysis combined 380 studies that assessed whether RNG output correlated with human…

Adults with Asperger Syndrome (AS) can recognise simple emotions and pass basic theory of mind tasks, but have difficulties recognising more complex emotions and mental states. This study describes a new battery of tasks, testing recognition of 20 complex emotions and mental states from faces and voices. The battery was given to males and females…

Fort Hays State Univesity offers a hybrid basic communication course. Competent speakers need to master public speaking skills (including suitable interpersonal skills), demonstrate nonverbal behaviors which support the verbal message, and be able to listen with literal and critical comprehension. However, increasing numbers of schools teach only…

There have been increasing incidents of innocent people who use American Sign Language (ASL) or another form of sign language being victimized by gang violence due to misinterpretation of ASL hand formations. ASL is familiar to learners with a variety of disabilities, particularly those in the deaf community. The problem is that gang members have…

A study examined instructional videoconferencing to determine the effects of manipulating the perceived proxemic distance between students and an on-screen instructor on students' recall and attitude response ratings. Subjects, 43 undergraduate students from a multi-section introductory public speaking course at a large midwestern university, were…

Writing labs should utilize the knowledge gained from a variety of fields to enhance further their programs, particularly with regard to the study of nonverbal communication. Regardless of the sincerity and importance of the tutor's suggestions, nonverbal messages often are sent to the student which undermine the session. Various channels of…

This study evaluated the use of facilitated communication to improve basic communication skills with five nonverbal severely and profoundly mentally handicapped students (11 and 12 years old) with cerebral palsy. Subjects were trained in the use of facilitated communication and in activities that encouraged students to point to "yes" or…

For educators, effective communication is an essential skill. This booklet is a collection of ideas, techniques, and tips to help educators strengthen their personal communication skills. The introduction discusses the need for administrators to communicate effectively with various audiences, describes the components of the communications process,…