Department of Psychology and Human Developemnt

The purpose of the present study was to examine the knowledge of primary school teachers from Greece about dyslexia and to explore the factors that might be related to better understanding of it. During the last decades, several studies have focused on teachers’ knowledge and preparation in Specific Learning Difficulties (SpLD) showing that primary school teachers do not have adequate knowledge about dyslexia and they do not seem appropriately prepared to teach pupils with reading and spelling difficulties.Towards the investigation of this topic, a non-experimental mixedmethods design was used in order to answer the research questions of the study. A questionnaire was constructed based on the existing literature. Two hundred and four primary school teachers in mainstream public and private schools of Greece were administered the questionnaire. The results indicated that teachers’ understanding of dyslexia varies greatly and there are gaps in their knowledge as well as misconceptions about this topic.
Also, the findings showed that there is lack of awareness concerning the strategies and intervention programmes for pupils with dyslexia. Finally, this dissertation makes recommendations concerning teachers’ preparation as well as future research directions.

PurposeThe contribution of genetic factors in persistence and early recovery from stuttering was assessed..MethodData from the Twins Early Development Study were employed. Parental reports regarding stuttering were collected at ages 2, 3, 4 and 7 years and were used to classify speakers into recovered and persistent groups. Of 12,892 children with at least two ratings, 950 children had recovered and 135 persisted in their stutter.ResultsLogistic regressions showed that the rating at age 2 was not predictive of later stuttering, whereas ratings at ages 3 and 4 were. Concordance rates were consistently higher for monozygotic than for dizygotic twin pairs (with the exception of girls at age 3). At 3, 4 and 7 years, the liability to stuttering was highly heritable (h2 estimates of between .58 and .66). Heritability for the recovered and persistent groups was also high, but did not differ from each other.ConclusionStuttering appears to be a disorder that has high heritability and little shared environment effect in early childhood and for recovered and persistent groups of children, by age 7. The clinical implications of the findings are discussed.

This thesis examines selective attention in young adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Existing literature regarding this issue is mixed; some research suggesting an overly-focused attentional style while others highlight an abnormally broad attentional lens . The research presented here has, for the first time, examined selective attention in individuals with ASD using a theoretically-led approach based on Lavie's Load Theory of attention and cognitive control (Lavie et al., 2004). Load theory states that the perceptual load (amount of potentially task relevant information) of a task affects selective attention. This theory may explain the equivocal findings in the current data on selective attention and ASD. Using behavioural measures, the pattern of selective attention under various levels of load was explored in individuals with ASD and matched controls. The results provide evidence of increased perceptual capacity in ASD. This means that, at any one time, individuals with ASD may be able to process more information from the visual environment. This increase in capacity was evident on tasks of both unconscious and conscious perception. In light of the social deficits observed in the condition, the work in this thesis also explored selective attention in the presence of social distractor stimuli. Results indicated that faces are less salient for individuals with ASD and, unlike for typical adults, are not processed in an automatic and mandatory fashion. These results bring together findings on selective attention with work on social processing in an attempt to find basic abnormalities which might be fundamental in explaining the disorder. 4 For Guy 5

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) research portrays a mixed picture of attentional abilities with demonstrations of enhancements (e.g., superior visual search) and deficits (e.g., higher distractibility). Here we test a potential resolution derived from the Load Theory of Attention (e.g., Lavie, 2005). In Load Theory, distractor processing depends on the perceptual load of the task and as such can only be eliminated under high load that engages full capacity. We hypothesize that ASD involves enhanced perceptual capacity, leading to the superior performance and increased distractor processing previously reported. Using a signal-detection paradigm, we test this directly and demonstrate that, under higher levels of load, perceptual sensitivity was reduced in typical adults but not in adults with ASD. These findings confirm our hypothesis and offer a promising solution to the previous discrepancies by suggesting that increased distractor processing in ASD results not from a filtering deficit but from enhanced perceptual capacity.

In recent years there has been a growing interest in the role of attention in the processing of social stimuli in individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Research has demonstrated that, for typical adults, faces have a special status in attention and are processed in an automatic and mandatory fashion even when participants attempt to ignore them. Under conditions of high load in a selective attention task, when irrelevant stimuli are usually not processed, typical adults continue to process distractor faces. Although there is evidence of a lack of attentional bias towards faces in ASD, there has been no direct test of whether faces are processed automatically using the distractorface paradigm.

Background: The use of rewards to encourage children to eat healthily is controversial. However, researcher-led interventions have shown that incentives combined with taste exposure can increase both intake and liking. To date, this has not been tested in the home setting. Objectives: The objectives were to test the hypothesis that parentadministered repeated taste exposures to an initially disliked vegetable combined with reward will increase children's liking and intake and to compare the effects of tangible and social rewards. Design: In this randomized controlled trial, families with children aged 3-4 y (n = 173) were randomly assigned to exposure + tangible reward (sticker), exposure + social reward (praise), or no-treatment control conditions after a pretest assessment in which a target vegetable was selected for each child. In the intervention groups, parents offered their children 12 daily tastes of the vegetable, giving either praise or a sticker for tasting. No specific advice was given to the control group. Assessments of intake and liking of the target vegetable were conducted by researchers immediately after the intervention period and 1 and 3 mo later. Results: Children who received exposure + tangible rewards increased their intake (P = 0.001) and liking (P = 0.001) of their target vegetable significantly more than did children in the control group. Differences were maintained at the 3-mo follow-up (intake: P = 0.005; liking: P = 0.001). Increases in intake and liking in the exposure + social reward group were not significantly different from the control group. Conclusion: The findings of this home-based study support parental use of tangible rewards with repeated taste exposures to improve children's diets. This trial is registered as ISRCTN42922680. Am J Clin Nutr 2012;95:72-7.

A~tract--This paper reviews the work of a team over two and a half years whose remit has been to "evaluate" a diverse range of CAL--computer assisted learning--in use in a university setting. It gives an overview of the team's current method, including some of the instruments most often used, and describes some of the painful lessons from early attempts. It then offers a critical discussion of what the essential features of the method are, and of what such studies are and are not good for. One of the main conclusions, with hindsight, is that its main benefit is as integrative evaluation: to help teachers make better use of the CAL by adjusting how it is used, rather than by changing the software or informing purchasing decisions.

Contact time is only part of a student's learnin8, especially in hiiOler education, and teachers and lab classes are only two of the resources students draw upon. Despite this, there is a prevalence of studies which appear to be evaluating a piece of conreeware in imlat/on. Lcarulng gains from a CAL packalle are important, but since acquisition and retention of knowiedle is really what is ultimately important and will depend on other learning experiences in the course, an additional question in any learning situation therefore i~ what resources is a student using? And, following up on that, which are most useful, are some bett~ than others, or do they complement each other in essential ways? This paper describes the dadsn and application of the Resource Questionnaire, the instrument we are developing in an attempt to gather information on the learning resources used by students. The remurees asked about may include not only lectures, tutorials end comzeware, but books, handouts, notes and discussions with other students. Some preliminm'y results are ¢hn~'ibed and the importan~ of this information to t~ching staff in asmsing and increasing the value of the resources to students by ensuring their effective integration into a course, is discussed. Copyrisht C 1996

Evaluative studies of CMC can produce misleading or even contradictory results due to an (understandable) focus on how the characteristics of the medium affect usage, ignoring the dialectic between technology and culture, of mutual adaptation over time. CMC exchanges in Higher Education take place within a broad teaching and learning system, of which most participants already have extensive experience. This system provides the context within which participants make sense of, and adapt to, the use of on-line communications. Thus interpretations of the processes shaping exchanges and their outcomes have to take into account: who participants see themselves as communicating with and why, how this serves longer-term learning goals, and what past experience of engaging with both task and audience they have had; what kinds of exchange are facilitated, both by the medium itself and how the task is organised, and how such affordances are honed over time; and also, how these interactions impact on other aspects of teaching and on learning outcomes.

A~tract--This paper reviews the work of a team over two and a half years whose remit has been to "evaluate" a diverse range of CAL--computer assisted learning--in use in a university setting. It gives an overview of the team's current method, including some of the instruments most often used, and describes some of the painful lessons from early attempts. It then offers a critical discussion of what the essential features of the method are, and of what such studies are and are not good for. One of the main conclusions, with hindsight, is that its main benefit is as integrative evaluation: to help teachers make better use of the CAL by adjusting how it is used, rather than by changing the software or informing purchasing decisions.

The project work presented in this paper is funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) January-December 1999. Our task has been to identify effective communicative practices for different technologies, in relation to the contexts in which they occur, and to feed back information about such practices to the educational community in a context-sensitive way. The technologies at issue are: video conferencing (one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-many); text-based communication (email, bulletin boards, conferencing,) and audio conferencing (telephone tutoring, shared workspace plus audio link). The teaching and learning sites that agreed to take part in this research project provide courses to a variety of learners -undergraduate, postgraduate, professional, full-and part-time -in a spread of subject disciplines. The breadth and range of learning environments represented should maximize the chances of teachers in further and higher education recognizing issues and circumstances that are similar to their own and provide a rich comparative framework. The lecturers from the various teaching sites are regarded as collaborators in this research, identifying their own issues and learning needs, and providing feedback to authenticate the interpretative process. This study approach bridges the practice-theory gap. We have completed the field work and are midway through analysing and interpreting the data in collaboration with teachers and students involved in the study. This will lead to the production of a flexible resource for individual lecturing staff which can also underpin staff development courses in good practice within networked learning environments. Further details and progress updates can be gleaned from our project web site at

A~tract--This paper reviews the work of a team over two and a half years whose remit has been to "evaluate" a diverse range of CAL--computer assisted learning--in use in a university setting. It gives an overview of the team's current method, including some of the instruments most often used, and describes some of the painful lessons from early attempts. It then offers a critical discussion of what the essential features of the method are, and of what such studies are and are not good for. One of the main conclusions, with hindsight, is that its main benefit is as integrative evaluation: to help teachers make better use of the CAL by adjusting how it is used, rather than by changing the software or informing purchasing decisions.

Evaluative studies of CMC can produce misleading or even contradictory results due to an (understandable) focus on how the characteristics of the medium affect usage, ignoring the dialectic between technology and culture, of mutual adaptation over time. CMC exchanges in Higher Education take place within a broad teaching and learning system, of which most participants already have extensive experience. This system provides the context within which participants make sense of, and adapt to, the use of on-line communications. Thus interpretations of the processes shaping exchanges and their outcomes have to take into account: who participants see themselves as communicating with and why, how this serves longer-term learning goals, and what past experience of engaging with both task and audience they have had; what kinds of exchange are facilitated, both by the medium itself and how the task is organised, and how such affordances are honed over time; and also, how these interactions impact on other aspects of teaching and on learning outcomes.

This paper describes an evaluation methodology which directly addresses the issue of process. The principal focus of the study is the effect of software variables on the patterns of interaction within pairs of users. The paper therefore explores methodological issues concerning how to describe and characterise interaction, and the various design choices faced in a study involving such analyses. Several frequently-encountered dilemmas are raised, one major one being the scope of an evaluation. This is raised in several forms; for example: the trading of depth (in the fine detail of a coding scheme for describing subject and the machine behaviour at the microanalytic level) against breadth (in terms of the maximum numbers of subjects that can be run in a study involving such detailed analyses), the sampling of cross-sectional as opposed to longitudinal data, and the fact that particular design choices, whilst facilitating the addressing of specific research questions, inevitably constrain one's ability to address other, equally pressing, issues.

Two studies are described which presented children with computer-based writing tasks. One compared observations of pairs and singletons within a classroom setting, with P5 children as subjects. The other video-recorded S2 learning difficulty pupils working in partnership or with a teacher and compared task performance under both dyad conditions. Focussing specifically upon evidence relating to revision during and following composition, both studies support a general observation in the field of writing research that children lack diagnostic strategies. However, there is some evidence that this finding is affected by writing task so that the problem may be in transfer, rather than lack, of skills. Developing useful teaching software to remedy this depends on an understanding of writing processes as writing competence develops; a programme for further work in this field is outlined.

We propose a central feature of on-line learning environments as transactive communication -where participants respond to and build on to each other's contributions, developmentally toward a mutual outcome. This differs from the more didactic, or at least tutor-controlled, dialogue that takes place in traditional learning environments. In the on-line setting, therefore, communication is particularly perceived to be an essential part of the learning process. This provides a strong motive for research to determine its characteristics and functions. The need for good systems for describing and understanding the contexts of learning activity is also crucial. Who is teaching what to whom and why -and why they are there to learn -is of course critical for the understanding and from this the prediction of good pedagogical strategy. At the micro and macro levels of analysis, then, we need to review, revise, develop and implement tools for research to inform good development of practice.

Cultures may display paradoxical natures when studied closely. For example, Americans are individualistic, yet are most generous with charity giving or volunteering for community events. This illustrates the challenges associated with stereotyping groups and cultures. Cultures are sometimes treated as homogenous with attendant generalisation. In the educational context, generalisations consequently influence attitudes held towards groups of learners. People from particular cultural backgrounds are often treated as a homogenous group with its attendant stereotypes irrespective of their individual contexts; an example is individuals from a Chinese cultural background who live in the West relative to those living in China.The present study used a questionnaire to measure an important value in Confucian culture (Chinese background) - Filial Piety - and how it relates to affective variables suggested to be important to academic achievement: self-efficacy and motivation. A sample of 9-11 ...