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The use of virtual museums in cultural transfer is an interdisciplinary approach of significant importance. Virtual museums play a crucial role in cultural transfer by digitally preserving cultural heritage. This article examines the educational role of virtual museums as a key tool in cultural transfer, particularly in the context of representing Ottoman works in virtual museums. Museums, indispensable elements of cultural transfer and education in contemporary society, have gained the opportunity to reach wider audiences by transitioning into the digital realm. In this context, the representation of Ottoman works in virtual museums and its role in cultural transfer are highlighted. Virtual museums hold great educational potential. It is well recognized that the representation of Ottoman works in virtual museums has educational effects such as expanding learning environments, facilitating access to knowledge, and increasing cultural awareness. Therefore, the representation of Ottoman works in virtual museums, especially in the field of education, is addressed. This study evaluates the role of the representation of Ottoman works in virtual museums in cultural transfer and education, thus demonstrating the educational potential of virtual museums. The research illustrates that virtual museums serve as significant tools for the preservation and dissemination of cultural heritage, and the representation of Ottoman works in virtual museums contributes to this process. Using Ferdinand de Saussure's theory of signs, signifier, signified, this study examines the representation and educational role of Ottoman works in virtual museums.

Communication is an indispensable element for the individual to exist in society. The individual has his first communication experiences in the family. The communication an individual establishes with his or her parents in early childhood shapes his or her entire life. The positive and effective communication process established in the family enables the child to acquire positive communication skills. At this point, the mother, who is the person with whom the child first and intensively communicates, is in an important position and directly affects the development of the child's communication skills. The aim of this research is to examine children's communication skills based on mothers' opinions. For this purpose, the phenomenological pattern, one of the qualitative research methods, was used. The study group of the research consists of 8 mothers whose children's age is between 43-70 months. 'Personal information form' and 'semi-structured interview form' were used as data collection tools. Content analysis was used to analyze the data obtained. The opinions of the mothers are included with direct quotes. As a result of the research; It was determined that children mostly communicate with their mothers about games and toys. It has been observed that children mostly determine the duration of child-mother communication. It was determined that the most frequently contacted family member was the mother. It has been found that the child's tone of voice increases when he/she gets angry, encounters a problem or gets excited. On the other hand; It has been observed that children use body language in their communication with their mothers, speak by making eye contact, and easily convey their problem situations to their mothers. It was determined that the majority of children used polite words. Additionally, it was found that in the presence of other individuals in mother-child communication, all but one of the children showed behavioral changes.

Little is known about OCD in people with learning disabilities (LD) in general and in terms of current and professional support. In this study, we examined caregivers' perceived challenges and strategies practiced in institutionalized settings in managing OCD in people with LD and derived implications for research and practice. We studied individual cases of people with LD (n = 7). Each case included group discussions (n = 28) and semistructured interviews with caregivers (n = 20). We used qualitative content analysis to analyze the data. Our findings reveal the following challenges for caregivers: recognizing and classifying ambiguous behaviors, recognizing emotional well-being and needs through nonverbal signals, finding and applying effective strategies, being unqualified regarding additional needs, managing inappropriate institutionalized conditions, and lacking external specialization. We identified five strategies for dealing with compulsive behavior: tolerating and allowing, accepting and supporting, involving, limiting the compulsive act, and stopping the act. Collaboration among psychiatric, therapeutic, and caregivers in institutionalized settings is critical for early identification and support of OCD. Challenges arise from caregivers' lack of training on the additional needs of people with LD and OCD, highlighting the urgent need for disorder-specific guidelines for identification and support.

Teachers play a key role in communicating with parents to support student learning. One of the more challenging aspects of this role for teachers is having a difficult conversation with a parent about their child. Difficult conversations, when needed, are best accomplished face-to-face incorporating effective communication skills to promote a positive and productive interaction. This article reviews a number of key practical communication skills that teachers can use when communicating with parents including use of clear vocabulary, active listening, I-messages, questioning strategies, paraphrasing and summarizing, leveled information, as well as attention to nonverbal messages. Strategies to support both planned and unplanned difficult conversations are discussed. Barriers to having difficult conversations between teachers and parents are outlined as well as new directions for research. Effective communication skills are integral for teachers to hold difficult, yet productive, conversations with parents to promote partnerships and to support student success.

With the fast development of artificial intelligence and emerging technologies, automatic recognition of students' facial expressions has received increased attention. Facial expressions are a kind of external manifestation of emotional states. It is important for teachers to assess students' emotional states and adjust teaching activities accordingly. However, existing methods for automatic facial expression recognition have the limitations of low accuracy of recognition and poor feature extraction. To address the problem, this study proposed a novel deep learning model called DenseNetX-CBAM to improve facial expression recognition by utilizing a variant of densely connected convolutional networks (DenseNet) to reduce unnecessary parameters and strengthen the reuse of expression features between networks; moreover, convolutional block attention module (CBAM) was integrated to allow the networks to focus on important special regions and important channels when representing features. The proposed model was tested using 217 video clips of 33 students in an online course. The results demonstrated promising effects of the method in improving the accuracy of facial expression recognition, which can help teachers to accurately recognize students' emotions and provide real-time adjustment in online learning environments.

While improving ability to communicate effectively is a given for developing student leadership potential, there are very few systematic frameworks to guide communication skill improvement. Using a model of emotional and social skills derived from research in interpersonal and emotional/nonverbal communication, tools and strategies for both assessing possession of complex and sophisticated social/communication skills and their development are discussed. This well-researched model breaks down complex communication into well-defined skills that underlie the more abstract leadership competencies of emotional and social intelligences. It provides a foundation for enhancing the emotional and social skills of students that lead them to be more effective in positions of leadership, and in social interactions more generally. Specific strategies for communication skill development are suggested, as well as discussion of formal guides and resources to aid in student leadership development.

This study proposes that the gestures of an agent tutor in a multimedia learning environment can generate positive and negative emotions in learners and influence their cognitive processes. To achieve this, we developed and integrated positive and negative agent tutor gestures in a multimedia learning environment directed by cognitive gestures. The effects of emotion type on cognition were examined in terms of cognitive load, learning motivation, and achievement. The subjects were 46 university students in Gyeonggi Province, South Korea. The students were divided into three learner groups: cognition, cognition + negative emotion, and cognition + positive emotion. The learners watched a tutorial lecture on the Notion note-taking app by an agent tutor. Data analysis was conducted using one-way ANOVA to determine the cognitive load, learning motivation, and achievement. The results showed that the positive emotion design was more effective in terms of intrinsic cognitive load, learning motivation, and achievement but had a higher extrinsic cognitive load. However, even the negative + passive group showed more positive learning than the cognition group. Although this study focused on gestures by an agent tutor, it implies that such gestures in multimedia learning contexts must be informed by emotional as well as cognitive design to provide a more meaningful learning experience.

Background: Gestures are an integral component in human-to-human communication when the speaker is visually present to the listener. In the past several years, research has examined how computer-generated pedagogical agents can be designed to perform the four main gesture types and what this means for agent persona and learning outcomes. The research into agent gesturing has only explored gestures without other presentation strategies such as visual aids or verbal redundancy to properly explore the impact of gestures, and to avoid overly "rich" displays of information. Objective: The objective of this study is to explore the use of static images and varying frequencies of gestures to assess whether two visual inputs increases the risk of the split-attention effect, and to investigate the potential for visual redundancy when two visual inputs coincide with narration. Data on cognitive load, agent persona, and learning outcomes (recall and transfer) will be collected to measure participants' learning experience while acquiring procedural knowledge, specifically regarding the principles of lightning, in comparison to previous research. Method: A mixed methods approach consisted of three gesture frequency conditions (enhanced, average, no) with 118 participants. Quantitative data were analysed using a random-effect linear regression model; whereas qualitative data was collected through individual interviews that lasted 15-20 min. Results and Conclusions: The use of enhanced gesture frequency and images may significantly increase intrinsic cognitive load, but gestures and images do not cause extraneous cognitive load. The enhanced gesture condition significantly outperformed the no-gesture condition. Interviews indicated that depending upon the gesture condition, students selectively attended to information that they perceived as offering them the greatest learning opportunity. Using two visual inputs does not cause split-attention, nor does it provide evidence of a visual redundancy effect.

Background: Traditionally, understanding students' learning dynamics, collaboration, emotions, and their impact on performance has posed challenges in formative assessment. The complexity of monitoring and assessing these factors have often limited the depth and breadth of insights. Objectives: This study aims to explore the potential of multimodal learning analytics as a formative assessment tool in math education. The focus is on discerning how collaborative discourse behaviours and emotional indicators interplay with lesson evaluation performance. Methods: Using undergraduate students' multimodal data, which includes collaboration data, facial behaviour data, and emotional data, the study explored the patterns of collaboration and emotion. Through the lens of multimodal learning analytics, we conducted exploratory data analysis to identify meaningful relationships between specific types of collaborative discourse, facial expressions, and performance indicators. Moreover, the study evaluated a machine learning model's potential to predict target learning outcomes by integrating data from multiple channels. Results: The analysis revealed key features from both discourse and emotion data as significant predictors. These findings underscore the potential of a multimodal analytical approach in understanding students' learning process and predicting outcomes. Conclusions: The study emphasizes the importance and feasibility of a multimodal learning analytic approach in the context of math education. It highlights the academic and practical implications of such an approach, along with its limitations, pointing towards future research directions in this area.

This study tackles the question: how is literacy engagement enacted in the context of significant disability? We delve into the complex literacy practices of Kalika, a three-year-old child with Rett syndrome, a rare neurodevelopmental disorder, to elucidate how she engages with printed text. Rett syndrome leads to near total loss of verbal communication and limited functional hand use, making it particularly challenging to participate in traditionally recognized forms of literacy engagement. Using in-depth qualitative data from both in- and out-of-school settings, we conduct a micro-level analysis of Kalika's behaviours during story time rituals. In order to bring analytic coherence to the data, we classified her modalities of literacy engagement under two broad categories: 1) kinesics, which included a) corporal (entailing full body positioning and motion), b) oral (involving contact with mouth or expression), c) oculesics (relating to eye gaze), and d) haptic (relating to hands) elements as well as 2) vocalics (pertaining to vocal tone and vocalisation). Our analysis elucidates the sophisticated, complex multimodal practices that Kalika enacts to engage with texts. For far too long, students with significant disabilities have been viewed from deficit perspectives, neglected within the literature as well as in the classroom, and thought to require additional instruction to learn how to engage with texts. We suggest that perhaps it is a question, instead, of educators and scholars learning to expand their own frames of reference.

The purpose of this review was to assess the effectiveness of tablet-based speech-generating devices (SGDs) in improving communication skills for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). A total of 31 single-case design intervention studies involving 84 individuals with ASD were reviewed and included in the analysis. We calculated Tau-U to evaluate the impact of interventions involving tablet-based SGDs on four different communication responses: specifically, mands, intraverbals, tacts, and vocalizations. To explore potential moderating variables for mand outcomes, we used the Kruskal--Wallis one-way test. The analysis revealed that interventions utilizing tablet-based SGDs led to improvements in communication responses. Specifically, large to very large changes were observed in mand and intraverbal responses, whereas moderate changes were noted in tact responses and vocalizations. The findings of this review underscore the potential of tablet-based SGDs in enhancing communication among individuals with ASD. We discuss the findings and provide implications for future research and practice.

Background: The hospital or health passport is widely acknowledged as a central element in making reasonable adjustments for patients with intellectual disabilities. Historically, the health passport has been used exclusively for patients with intellectual disabilities; however, it has wider applications for any patient requiring additional support. Commonly, it documents past medical history, communication needs and a person's means of expressing pain. There are, however, significant barriers to their use, meaning patients are unable to access adjustments to improve their experiences in a healthcare system that already marginalises and discriminates against people with intellectual disabilities. This umbrella review aims to establish whether the passport is an effective reasonable adjustment, identify barriers to its use and make recommendations to alleviate these barriers. Methods: Database and citation searches informed a synthesis of international evidence to address these aims. Following the removal of duplicates and screening, nine review papers originating from the United Kingdom, Australia and Ireland were identified for inclusion. Seven focus on the use of passports for patients with intellectual disabilities, one on the use of passports for autistic people, and one exploring the use of passports for patients with dementia. Findings: The results demonstrated that the passports are effective in improving care for patients with intellectual disabilities. However, there are barriers to its routine use. We identified three main issues with the current use of the hospital passport. First, there is a need for greater managerial support to implement reasonable adjustments. Second, standardisation of the passports at a national level will make them more accessible to healthcare professionals and will ensure that information is not 'buried'; the development of a standardised passport must involve consultation of patients, carers and staff to meet the needs of all stakeholders. Finally, education for all healthcare staff to raise awareness of the passport and ensure it is utilised appropriately will ultimately pave the way for positive, long-lasting change. Conclusions: Passports can be an effective means of communicating reasonable adjustments. Addressing a lack of awareness of its utility, ensuring managerial commitment to implementing reasonable adjustments and making the passport accessible through a standardised format will empower patients to engage with their own care.

Research on gesture development has mostly focused on home environments. Little is known about early communicative development in other relevant contexts, such as early-year-schools. These settings, rich in diverse educative situations, objects, and communicative partners, provide a contrast to parent-child interactions, complementing our understanding of gesture development. This study aims to describe the development of the first gestures in the infant classrooms of early-years-schools, focusing on ostensive gestures of showing and giving-their emergence, communicative functions, and relation to the subsequent emergence of pointing. We conducted a longitudinal, observational investigation analyzing the gestures of 21 children (7-13 months). Over 7 months, we observed and registered children's daily interactions in the classroom, employing a mixed quantitative and qualitative approach to analyze the types and functions of their gestures. We found a significant increase and diversification of gesture types and functions with age. Gestures followed a proximal-distal developmental course. Ostensive gestures were the earliest and most prevalent gestures observed. There was a correlation between the frequency of these gestures, with ostensive gestures fulfilling communicative functions later observed in pointing. Our qualitative analysis revealed the progressive construction of ostensive gestures into spontaneous, complex, and conventional forms of communication. These results highlight the important role of ostensive gestures in early communicative development, paving the way for distal communication through pointing and relating to the origin of intentional communication. More broadly, these findings have significant implications for early educational practices and show the value of conducting research on developmental processes in early education.

This study investigated the extent to which different pedagogical gestures contribute to learners' foreign or second language (L2) narrative recall, and further discussed how task complexity and task difficulty (i.e. working memory capacity or WMC) influence recall performance. Sixty-four adolescent learners, assigned to four different gesture viewing conditions (iconic gestures, deictic gestures, beat gestures, or no gesture), were required to listen to an instructor telling two stories (one complex and one simple) and then retell both stories twice: once immediately after listening (immediate recall) and a second time two weeks later (delayed recall). Recall performance was evaluated by the number of relevant pieces of event and motion information produced in the participants' retelling. The results show that L2 learners who were exposed to deictic and iconic gesture conditions outperformed the other gesture groups, particularly in delayed narrative recall, but only in complex tasks where cognitive demands were increased. It was also found that event and motion information was retained for a longer period of time in the deictic and iconic conditions respectively. Although both high and low WMC groups benefitted from viewing gestures, this finding further indicates that the beneficial effect of gestures on learners could possibly compensate for low WMC by providing scaffolding that reduces cognitive burden in narrative recall.

Autistic youth often experience challenges in interactions with neurotypical peers. One factor that may influence successful interactions with peers is interpersonal synchrony, or the degree to which interacting individuals align their behaviors (e.g. facial expressions) over time. Autistic and neurotypical youth were paired together into three dyad types: autistic participants paired with autistic participants (AUT-AUT), autistic participants paired with neurotypical participants (AUT-NT), and neurotypical participants with neurotypical participants (NT-NT). Dyads participated in a free conversation task and a video-watching task. We tested whether smiling synchronization differed between AUT-AUT, AUT-NT, and NT-NT dyads. We further tested if smiling synchronization predicted youth-reported interaction enjoyment. AUT-NT dyads had significantly reduced smiling synchronization compared with NT-NT dyads. Smiling synchronization also predicted multiple aspects of participant-rated interaction enjoyment, such as the desire to interact with the peer partner again, above and beyond the overall amount of smiling in the interaction. These findings indicate links between smiling synchronization and interaction enjoyment for autistic and neurotypical youth. Identifying opportunities to synchronize or share positive affect in interactions may promote more enjoyable interactions for both autistic and neurotypical youth.

Shyness is typically associated with avoidant social behavior and restricted affect in new social situations. However, we know considerably less about how one child's shyness influences another child's behavior and affect in new social situations. Children's shyness was parent-reported when children were age 3 (N = 105, 52 girls, M[subscript age] = 3.50 years), and children were tested approximately 1 year later (M[subscript age] = 4.76 years) in same-gender dyads where they were asked to give an impromptu speech about their most recent birthday in front of an experimenter and the other member of the dyad. We examined whether children's shyness and speech order influenced their own and their social partner's observed behavior and affect during the speech. Regardless of speech order, children's own shyness was positively associated with their own avoidant social behavior and gaze aversion. Regardless of shyness, children who gave their speech second averted their gaze more than children who gave their speech first. We also found that children who gave their speech second displayed less positive affect if their social partner who they watched give the speech first was shyer. We speculate that some 4-year-old children may be sensitive to the avoidant behaviors of their shy peers and, in turn, respond with less animation when it is their turn to participate in the same activity.

The emergence of immersive digital technologies, such as shared augmented reality (shAR), virtual reality (VR) and motion capture (MC) offers promising new opportunities to advance our understanding of human cognition and design innovative technology-enhanced learning experiences. Theoretical frameworks for embodied and extended cognition can guide novel ways in which learning in these environments can be understood and analyzed. This conceptual paper explores a research method in Educational Technology--multimodal analysis for embodied technologies--and provides examples from shAR, VR, and MC projects that use this approach. This analysis involves tracking learners' gestures, actions on physical and virtual objects, whole body movements and positions, and their talk moves, in addition to other relevant modalities (e.g., written inscriptions), over time and across space. We show how this analysis allows for new considerations to arise relating to the design of educational technology to promote collaboration, to more fully capture students' knowledge, and to understand and leverage the perspectives of learners.

Constructive interactions and knowledge integration activities are methods commonly used for learning; however, establishing successful coordination becomes a hurdle in computer-mediated collaborations. The development of systems to facilitate communication activities in such situations has been attempted, but models are still required for capturing learners' interactions and detecting their quality. This study explored several types of verbal and nonverbal behaviors of learners that can be implemented while designing tutoring systems to effectively capture their interaction processes in scenarios where learners engage in collaborative learning mediated by a pedagogical conversational agent (PCA). This study focused on the degree of behavior recurrence of each speaker, which is considered suitable for observing levels of effectiveness. Specifically, this study focused on three indicators--gaze synchronization, language conformance, and emotional matching through facial expression--to establish a system-based index for measuring learners' collaborative processes such as synchronization. This study experimentally examined the relationship between these indicators and the performance and process of collaborative learning among 44 learners while using PCA for facilitation. Subsequently, numerous dependent variables in the collaborative learning process were predicted using the three proposed indicators. However, no significant correlation was established between learning performance and the indicators used. These findings show that the recurrence of indicators is useful for estimating the collaborative learning process and that these indicators can be used in the development of learning support systems to trace learners' achievements in successful interactions.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been recognised as a promising technology for methodological progress and theoretical advancement in learning sciences. However, there remains few empirical investigations into how AI could be applied in learning sciences research. This study aims to utilize AI facial recognition to inform the learning regulation behaviors in synchronous online collaborative learning environments. By studying groups of university students (N = 36) who participated in their online classes under the COVID-19 social distancing mandates, we strive to understand the interrelation between individual affective states and their collaborative group members. Theoretically underpinned by the socially shared regulation of learning framework, our research features a cutting-edge insight into how learners socially shared regulation in group-based tasks. Findings accentuate fundamental added values of AI application in education, whilst indicating further interesting patterns about student self-regulation in the collaborative learning environment. Implications drawn from the study hold strong potential to provide theoretical and practical contributions to the exploration of AI supportive roles in designing and personalizing learning needs, as well as fathom the motion and multiplicity of collaborative learning modes in higher education.

Maternal substance use and unpredictable maternal sensory signals may affect child development, but no studies have examined them together. We explored the unpredictability, frequency and duration of maternal sensory signals in 52 Caucasian mother-child dyads, 27 with and 25 without maternal substance use. We also examined the association between unpredictable maternal signals and children's cognitive development. Maternal sensory signals were evaluated with video-recorded dyadic free-play interactions at child age of 24 months. Children's cognitive development was evaluated with Bayley-III at 24 months and with WPPSI-III at 48 months. We found similar unpredictability, frequency and duration of sensory signals between substance-using and non-using mothers. Higher unpredictability of maternal sensory signals was robustly linked with poorer child cognitive development at 24 months. The link persisted, although weakened to 48 months. Unpredictability of maternal sensory signals may be a vital parenting aspect shaping children's development, but more research is needed in high-risk groups.

This study examines how intellectual disability nurses employed in residential living services for persons with intellectual disabilities, in Norway, deal with medication management for these individuals. Using a qualitative study, a total of 18 intellectual disability nurses were interviewed as part of four focus groups. The results demonstrate six main challenges: First, Being alone with the responsibility of medication management - a challenge; Second, The need for further competence development; Third, Teaching and supervising unskilled colleagues in safe medication management; Fourth, Interpreting residents with little or only nonverbal communication; Fifth, The need to act as advocates when residents require hospitalization; Sixth, Deficient systems for medication management on several levels. The findings point to several major flaws in the system of medication management, which necessitates the need for highly qualified intellectual disability nurses. Managers must ensure that there is a secure system to mitigate errors and promote patient safety.

Narrative recall and comprehension are important lifelong skills. While gesturing may improve recall by alleviating cognitive load, it may be differentially beneficial, depending on task and individual characteristics. While research on gesture's effects on a variety of task modalities is burgeoning, effects on recall of narratives read aloud are under-examined. Further, emotional valence and individual differences in verbal memory may affect recall, through effects on task difficulty. If gesturing lightens cognitive load, it may be more beneficial for harder tasks, namely for narratives lacking emotional content and for individuals with poorer verbal memory. Across two studies, impacts of gesture production, emotional valence, and individual differences on narrative recall were evaluated. In Study 1, participants (N = 100) read aloud three emotive narratives (positive, negative, neutral) while either instructed to gesture or receiving no gesture instructions. Gesture production hindered recall, particularly for those with higher verbal memory. Emotion benefited recall, with enhanced recall of the negative narrative and impaired recall for the neutral narrative. In Study 2, following a measure of individual propensity to gesture, participants (N = 98) similarly read aloud three emotive narratives. Instructions to gesture hindered recall for participants with a lower propensity to gesture, and emotional narratives again saw enhanced recall relative to the neutral narrative. Propensity to gesture and verbal memory were positively associated with narrative comprehension. Results suggest instructions to produce gestures may for some individuals hinder recall for self-guided learners when studying written texts, while emotional content benefits recall.

Translanguaging theory highlights the dynamic use of multiple languages and communication modes by multilingual people in their daily experiences. Museums are informal family learning spaces where multilingual families use languages and other semiotic resources to create learning opportunities for their children. Using a microethnographic approach to discourse analysis and multimodal interaction analysis, I examined how a multilingual family uses translanguaging practices to organize their family learning in museums and the role of pointing gestures as part of their translanguaging repertoires in multilingual family learning. The analysis of two literacy events highlights that a child and his mother translanguaged with various semiotic resources to organize museum performances, joint attention, and telling, and that pointing gestures played a role in constructing a translanguaging space as they organized the two performances. Pointing involved the family in reading signage texts and allowed the mother to translate them for the child. Viewing translation as part of the translanguaging repertoire, this study recognizes the importance of the role of pointing gestures in constructing family learning at museums, enriching children's schooling and literacy learning in classrooms. I argue that recognizing pointing as a critical component of translanguaging allows educators to develop strategies that leverage families' unique repertoires to support multilingual students' language and literacy learning.

The study examines the interactive functions of gesture repetitions as a specific form of interpersonal synchronization in argumentative decision-making processes of peers (1-6 graders). Based on a collection of 13 instances, gesture repetitions are investigated in the process of collaboratively co-constructing arguments. Drawing on multimodal interaction analysis, a description is provided of how gestures are aligned and laminated with other multimodal resources, such as body posture and gaze, into multimodal repetitions during the co-construction of both arguments and counterarguments. The study illustrates the way in which multimodal repetitions serve to mark coherence between the participants' turns and contribute to the argument. As the multimodal resources are highly synchronized with each other, multimodal repetitions also make the collaboration of specific participants publicly visible to all interactants, thereby attaching more importance to the sharedness--and persuasiveness--of the constructed argument. The analysis therefore focuses on both depictive and pragmatic gestures that are conceived as parts of multimodal gestalts (Mondada, 2014), and describes different trajectories of co-constructions that entail interactively successful as well as unsuccessful examples.

Instructional videos for teaching second language (L2) vocabulary often feature an instructor onscreen. The instructor in the video may involuntarily produce beat gestures with their hands, as occurs in real teaching settings. Beat gestures highlight key information in speech by conveying the rhythm of the language, but do not themselves convey semantic meaning. However, little is known about how the instructor's beat gestures affect L2 vocabulary learning. We conducted two experiments on the effects of the instructor's purposeful (scripted) beat gestures in instructional videos that included an instructor and slides, with English L2 vocabulary as the topic. In Experiment 1, using a within-participant design, we tested the hypothesis that an instructor's gestures (beat gesture vs. no gesture) would improve learning performance. The results showed that the instructor's use of beat gestures increased learners' accuracy and reduced reaction time on an L2 learning performance test. In Experiment 2, using a between-participants design, we tested the assumption that the benefits of beat gestures in L2 vocabulary learning are in part due to reductions in cognitive load while learning. This assumption was supported by both a self-report measurement of cognitive load and electroencephalogram (EEG) data showing lower theta power and lower alpha power when the instructor used beat gestures. The results of this study have applied value for designing effective instructional videos on the topic of L2 vocabulary learning.

Purpose: The heterogeneity of autism is well documented, but few studies have studied the heterogeneity of gesture production ability in autistic children. The present study aimed to identify subgroups of autistic children who displayed heterogeneous gesture production abilities and explore the underlying factors, including autism characteristics, intellectual ability, and language ability, that were associated with the heterogeneity. Methods: A total of 65 Chinese autistic children (mean age = 5;3) participated. Their autism characteristics and intellectual ability were assessed by standardized measurements. Language output and gesture production were captured from a parent-child interaction task. Results: We conducted a hierarchical cluster analysis and identified four distinct clusters. Cluster 1 and Cluster 2 both had low gesture production whereas Cluster 3 and Cluster 4 had high gesture production. Both Clusters 1 and 2 had relatively strong autism characteristics, in comparison to Clusters 3 and 4. Conclusions: Our findings revealed that children with stronger autism characteristics may gesture less often than those with weaker characteristics. However, the relationship between language ability and intellectual ability and gesture production was not clear. These findings shed light on the directions of intervention on gesture production for autistic children, especially those with stronger autism characteristics.

Blind adults display language-specificity in their packaging and ordering of events in speech. These differences affect the representation of events in "co-speech gesture"--gesturing with speech--but not in "silent gesture"--gesturing without speech. Here we examine when in development blind children begin to show adult-like patterns in co-speech and silent gesture. We studied speech and gestures produced by 30 blind and 30 sighted children learning Turkish, equally divided into 3 age groups: 5-6, 7-8, 9-10 years. The children were asked to describe three-dimensional spatial event scenes (e.g., running out of a house) first with speech, and then without speech using only their hands. We focused on physical motion events, which, in blind adults, elicit cross-linguistic differences in speech and co-speech gesture, but cross-linguistic similarities in silent gesture. Our results showed an effect of language on gesture when it was accompanied by speech (co-speech gesture), but "not" when it was used without speech (silent gesture) across both blind and sighted learners. The language-specific co-speech gesture pattern for both packaging and ordering semantic elements was present at the earliest ages we tested the blind and sighted children. The silent gesture pattern appeared later for blind children than sighted children for both packaging and ordering. Our findings highlight gesture as a robust and integral aspect of the language acquisition process at the early ages and provide insight into when language does and does "not" have an effect on gesture, even in blind children who lack visual access to gesture.

Contrary to prevailing research on willingness to communicate (WTC) which treats spoken second language (L2) as the predominant indicator of WTC, this study examines a young English as a second language (ESL) learner's WTC expressed through multimodal means and her utilization of multimodal and multilingual resources for mediating WTC in translingual environments. Data were collected from videotaped ESL lessons and an interview. Adopting a multimodal conversation analysis (CA) approach, this cross-disciplinary study analyzes the ESL novice's WTC expressions in two communicative settings: small-group interactions in ESL class and a multilingual triad conversation in an interview. Findings reveal that (1) gestural WTC display can signify more than one's intention to enter discourse, (2) contrary to previous WTC studies, first language (L1) use can indicate L2 WTC, and (3) the learner used diverse semiotic resources to mediate WTC and sustain discursive engagement. Implications are discussed with respect to the findings. This study extends the understanding of WTC beyond spoken L2 expressions, emphasizing embodied display and L1 use in the learner's communicative repertoire. Additionally, it sheds light on the learner's strategic use of multimodal resources to sustain engagement in translingual environments, contributing to the broader field of language education and multimodal analysis.

In e-learning environments, most adaptive systems do not consider the learner's emotional state when recommending activities for learning difficulties, blockages, or demotivation. In this paper, we propose a new approach of emotion-based adaptation in e-learning environments. The system will allow recommendation resources/activities to motivate and support the learner in learning. Our first contribution is modeling the learner's emotion by exploiting the facial expressions generated during the pedagogical activities. For this purpose, a probability-based emotion quantification algorithm has been proposed. To recommend support resources, we presented our adaptation approach that leverages a set of adopted adaptation criteria, where the weighting of these criteria differs from one support resource to another. Five experiments aimed at validating the approach were conducted on two groups of students (test and control groups). The results show our approach's impact on improving the learner's cognitive level, engagement time, and motivation.

Purpose: Gesture delay in autistic infants and toddlers has been widely reported. The developmental trajectory of gesture production during early childhood is understudied. Thus, little is known about the possible changes of gesture production over time. The present study aimed to document the development of gesture production in autistic children and examine whether child-based factors (chronological age and initial language skills) predicted gesture development. Method: A total of 33 Chinese-speaking autistic children (M[subscript age] = 56.39 months, SD = 8.54 months) played with their parents at four time points over a 9-month period. Their speech was transcribed, and their gestures were coded from parent-child interaction. Multilevel modeling analysis was used to investigate the development of gesture and its associated factors. Results: The total number of gestures produced by autistic children decreased over time. Among different factors, children's initial age significantly and negatively predicted children's gesture production, while initial language positively predicted children's gesture production. Conclusions: Gesture delay persists in preschool age. The decline in gesture production was associated with children's age and initial language ability. These findings shed light on the difficulties surrounding gesture use in autistic children.

New motor skills can shape how infants communicate with their caregivers. For example, learning to walk allows infants to move faster and farther than they previously could, in turn allowing them to approach their caregivers more frequently to gesture or vocalize. Does the link between walking and communication differ for infants later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), whose communicative and motor development differs from their neurotypically developing peers? We prospectively followed two groups of infants longitudinally during the transition from crawling to walking: (1) N = 25 infants with no family history of ASD; and (2) N = 91 infants with an older sibling with ASD. Fifteen infants were later diagnosed with ASD, and 26 infants showed a language delay (but did not receive an ASD diagnosis). After learning to walk, infants without ASD or language delay showed considerable changes in their communication: They gestured more frequently, and increasingly coordinated their gestures and vocalizations with locomotion (e.g., by approaching a caregiver and showing a toy). Infants with language delay showed similar but attenuated growth in their communication. However, infants later diagnosed with ASD did not display enhanced communication after they began to walk.

The objective of this case study was to identify the role of finger gestures in learning mathematics informally during play, especially in sociocultural settings. A mathematical activity involving addition was qualitatively analyzed at a Japanese preschool. We explored how the process of subjectification and objectification contributed to a mathematical activity at a Japanese preschool and how the role of preschoolers' finger gestures changed during the process of learning mathematics. We utilized Radford's theoretical construct of joint labor and analyzed Japanese preschool children's mathematical behaviors from a sociocultural perspective. The subjects were 15 Japanese preschool children and their teacher. We relied on both Radford's methodology and a microgenetic approach for the analysis. We found that subjectification and objectification proceeded in the scene of the conversations regarding addition; observing joint labor in a classroom activity offered valuable insights into these processes. In the activity, the children actively extended their practice of posing and answering quizzes, and learned how to resolve a conflict with the support of the teacher. Secondly, although the role of finger gestures was originally used to obtain correct answers to quizzes, it was reconstructed to solve the conflict between the children through the teacher's mediation. This showed that, even in an environment where children implicitly learn mathematics, they learn from one another, including the teacher, and that gestures in mathematical communications function well for developing mathematical thinking and skills.

Purpose: The current study examined the predictive role of gestures and gesture-speech combinations on later spoken language outcomes in minimally verbal (MV) autistic children enrolled in a blended naturalistic developmental/behavioral intervention (Joint Attention, Symbolic Play, Engagement, and Regulation [JASPER] + Enhanced Milieu Teaching [EMT]). Method: Participants were 50 MV autistic children (40 boys), ages 54-105 months (M = 75.54, SD = 16.45). MV was defined as producing fewer than 20 spontaneous, unique, and socially communicative words. Autism symptom severity (Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule--Second Edition) and nonverbal cognitive skills (Leiter-R Brief IQ) were assessed at entry. A natural language sample (NLS), a 20-min examiner-child interaction with specified toys, was collected at entry (Week 1) and exit (Week 18) from JASPER + EMT intervention. The NLS was coded for gestures (deictic, conventional, and representational) and gesture-speech combinations (reinforcing, disambiguating, supplementary, other) at entry and spoken language outcomes: speech quantity (rate of speech utterances) and speech quality (number of different words [NDW] and mean length of utterance in words [MLUw]) at exit using European Distributed Corpora Project Linguistic Annotator and Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts. Results: Controlling for nonverbal IQ and autism symptom severity at entry, rate of gesture-speech combinations (but not gestures alone) at entry was a significant predictor of rate of speech utterances and MLUw at exit. The rate of supplementary gesture-speech combinations, in particular, significantly predicted rate of speech utterances and NDW at exit. Conclusion: These findings highlight the critical importance of gestural communication, particularly gesture-speech (supplementary) combinations in supporting spoken language development in MV autistic children.

Research has consistently shown that difficulties in facial emotion recognition (FER) are associated with peer problems and internalizing symptoms during middle childhood. However, no longitudinal research has investigated the direction of effects, that is, how these constructs influence each other across time. In this preregistered three-wave panel study, we tested the directional effects between FER, peer problems, and internalizing symptoms among Finnish school-aged children (n = 3,607; M[subscript age] = 8.20, SD[subscript age] = 0.86; 51% female). The results of random-intercept cross-lagged panel models showed that a low FER accuracy and high biases toward happiness and sadness correlated with higher levels of peer problems and internalizing symptoms at the between-person level. However, we found no evidence of directional effects at the within-person level. Overall, our findings suggest that these constructs might be associated because of shared underlying causes, rather than mutually influencing one another in middle childhood.

The current study examined to what extent face and speech processing interact with each other and whether they enhance or impair the processing of the other in 5-year-olds (n = 51) and adults (n = 34). Using a computer-based speeded sorting task allowed to directly test the influence of auditory speech on face processing and the influence of face identity on auditory speech processing within one experiment. Participants were asked to either sort faces while ignoring auditory speech information (face task) or to sort auditory speech while ignoring face information (speech task). The tasks comprised three conditions: control (irrelevant dimension constant), correlational (congruent pairing of relevant and irrelevant dimension), and orthogonal (random pairing). For the 5-year-olds, reaction times did not differ in the face task, but differed in the speech task. They were the fastest in the control and the slowest in the orthogonal compared with the constant conditions. Adults' reaction times were similar across conditions and tasks indicating an independent processing of faces and speech. Hence, we found an asymmetrical processing pattern between face and auditory speech processing in children, in which face identity is processed independent of auditory speech; however, auditory speech processing is affected by face identity.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relations among children's symbolic functioning at 15 months, joint attention at 24 months, expressive communication at 24 and 36 months, and executive functioning at 36 months. With the sample from rural areas in the United States collected by the Family Life Project (N = 1,008), a longitudinal data analysis was conducted. The results of structural equation modeling suggested that children's symbolic functioning at 15 months and children's executive functioning at 36 months was directly related to each other. These two variables were also indirectly related to each other through joint attention at 24 months and expressive communication at 24 and 36 months. Psychological distancing and verbal and nonverbal communication were used to explain the role symbolic functioning plays in the development of executive functioning during the second and the third years of children's lives.

The present study identifies and maps the reflexive praxis of two experienced English as a foreign language (EFL) instructors as they reconstruct and negotiate textbook material in situ. An abundance of critical studies underscoring social injustices in the contents of globally published EFL textbooks do not sufficiently address the negotiation of their multimodal discourses during class time. Although reflexive teaching practice in language learning classrooms has a robust pool of research, limited scholarly attention has been given to the active negotiation of a textbook's multimodal discourse in Korean university classrooms. The present study asks: (1) How do two instructors at different Korean universities negotiate the contents of an EFL textbook with their students during class? (2) How do the students react to the multimodal discourse negotiated in their textbooks? (3) What pedagogical implications do the findings lend to EFL textbook instruction in Korean university contexts? Using Norris' (2004) framework for video transcription of multimodal interaction in two Korean university English communication classes, the findings reveal that reflexive negotiation between students and instructors is a kind of rhetorical accomplishment that lessens the potential for cultural marginalization in the multimodal discourse of EFL textbooks. Implications suggest that textbook reflexivity in situ raises the value of student EFL learning investments.

Academic misconduct is a growing problem in online education. While there are ways to curb academic misconduct in online exams, utilization of technology to proctor online exams in a simple manner in limited-resource settings remain unclear. This study set out to identify a reliable technique for utilizing webcam footage to identify instances of academic dishonesty. Instead of applying component-based feature extraction, this study provides a deep learning-based approach to online exam proctoring that recognizes exam candidates' behaviors directly from video input. By using an online exam dataset consisting of twenty-four test-takers who replicate real-world actions, experimental results show the efficiency of the approach. The article provides a collection of webcam recordings with annotated actions to evaluate the proposed approach. The findings show that a deep learning model using the Slow Only variation has a true detection rate of 78.9%. The visualization module reduces the amount of time invigilators must spend watching videos to capture academic misbehaviors by offering a comprehensive graphical view with details of a candidate's actions during an exam. The study's conclusions will help design an effective and efficient system for online exam proctoring in resource-constrained environments.

Utilizing a novel computerized task, we aimed to examine whether social anxiety symptoms would be related to individual differences in facial emotion recognition (FER) in a sample of autistic male adolescents and young adults without intellectual disability. Results indicated that social anxiety and IQ predicted poorer FER, irrespective of specific emotion type. When probing specific effects within emotion and condition types, social anxiety impacted surprise and disgust FER during a "truncated" viewing condition and not "full viewing" condition. Collectively, results suggest that social anxiety in autism may play a larger role in FER than previously thought. Future work should consider the role of social anxiety within autism as a factor that may meaningfully relate to FER assessment and intervention.

The purpose of this study was to examine potential differences in social learning between individuals with fragile X syndrome (FXS), the leading known inherited cause of intellectual disability, and individuals with non-syndromic autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Thirty school-aged males with FXS and 26 age and symptom-matched males with non-syndromic ASD, were administered a behavioral treatment probe designed to improve levels of social gaze during interactions with others. The treatment probe was administered by a trained behavior therapist over two days in our laboratory and included reinforcement of social gaze in two alternating training conditions -- looking while listening and looking while speaking. Prior to each session, children in each group were taught progressive muscle relaxation and breathing techniques to counteract potential increased hyperarousal. Measures included the rate of learning in each group during treatment, in addition to levels of social gaze and heart rate obtained during administration of a standardized social conversation task administered prior to and following the treatment probe. Results showed that learning rates obtained during administration of the treatment probe were significantly less steep and less variable for males with FXS compared to males with non-syndromic ASD. Significant improvements in social gaze were also observed for males with FXS during the social conversation task. There was no effect of the treatment probe on heart rate in either group. These data reveal important differences in social learning between the two groups and have implications for early interventions in the two conditions.

Recent evidence suggests that deaf children with CIs exposed to nonnative sign language from hearing parents can attain age-appropriate vocabularies in both sign and spoken language. It remains to be explored whether deaf children with CIs who are exposed to early nonnative sign language, but only up to implantation, also benefit from this input and whether these benefits also extend to memory abilities, which are strongly linked to language development. The present study examined the impact of deaf children's early short-term exposure to nonnative sign input on their spoken language and their phonological memory abilities. Deaf children who had been exposed to nonnative sign input before and after cochlear implantation were compared to deaf children who never had any exposure to sign input as well as to children with typical hearing. The children were between 5;1 and 7;1 years of age at the time of testing and were matched on age, sex, and socioeconomic status. The results suggest that even short-term exposure to nonnative sign input has positive effects on general language and phonological memory abilities as well as on nonverbal working memory--with total length of exposure to sign input being the best predictor of deaf children's performance on these measures. The present data suggest that even access to early short-term nonnative visual language input is beneficial for the language and phonological memory abilities of deaf children with cochlear implants, suggesting also that parents should not be discouraged from learning and exposing their child to sign language.

It is known that the rhythms of speech are visible on the face, accurately mirroring changes in the vocal tract. These low-frequency visual temporal movements are tightly correlated with speech output, and both visual speech (e.g., mouth motion) and the acoustic speech amplitude envelope entrain neural oscillations. Low-frequency visual temporal information ('visual prosody') is known from behavioural studies to be perceived by infants, but oscillatory studies are currently lacking. Here we measure cortical tracking of low-frequency visual temporal information by 5- and 8-month-old infants using a rhythmic speech paradigm (repetition of the syllable 'ta' at 2 Hz). Eye-tracking data were collected simultaneously with EEG, enabling computation of cortical tracking and phase angle during visual-only speech presentation. Significantly higher power at the stimulus frequency indicated that cortical tracking occurred across both ages. Further, individual differences in preferred phase to visual speech related to subsequent measures of language acquisition. The difference in phase between visual-only speech and the same speech presented as auditory-visual at 6- and 9-months was also examined. These neural data suggest that individual differences in early language acquisition may be related to the phase of entrainment to visual rhythmic input in infancy.

The improvements in attention by mindfulness training have been proved. However, the effects of mindfulness training on attention to emotional stimuli were mixed. We employed a randomized, controlled design to investigate the effects of mindfulness training on attention to emotional expressions, and investigated whether baseline levels of dispositional mindfulness and emotional intelligence would moderate the intervention effects. Forty participants received 8-week mindfulness training, and another forty participants attended two lectures about mindfulness. All participants completed the visual search task, the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire, and the Emotional Intelligence Scale at both pre-training and post-training. The results showed that the improvements in search efficiencies were larger in the mindfulness group than those in the control group for sad and angry faces, but not for happy faces. In addition, baseline emotional intelligence but not dispositional mindfulness played a significant moderating role in the relationship between mindfulness training and emotional attention to sadness and anger. The search efficiencies of negative emotions (i.e., anger and sadness) but not positive emotions (i.e., happiness) were significantly improved by mindfulness training. Individuals with a high level of baseline emotional intelligence showed significant improvement in search efficiencies relative to those with a low level of emotional intelligence.

Gestures--hand movements that accompany speech and express ideas--can help children learn how to solve problems, flexibly generalize learning to novel problem-solving contexts, and retain what they have learned. But does it matter who is doing the gesturing? We know that producing gesture leads to better comprehension of a message than watching someone else produce gesture. But we do not know how producing versus observing gesture impacts deeper learning outcomes such as generalization and retention across time. Moreover, not all children benefit equally from gesture instruction, suggesting that there are individual differences that may play a role in who learns from gesture. Here, we consider two factors that might impact whether gesture leads to learning, generalization, and retention after mathematical instruction: (1) whether children see gesture or do gesture and (2) whether a child spontaneously gestures before instruction when explaining their problem-solving reasoning. For children who spontaneously gestured before instruction, both doing and seeing gesture led to better generalization and retention of the knowledge gained than a comparison manipulative action. For children who did not spontaneously gesture before instruction, doing gesture was less effective than the comparison action for learning, generalization, and retention. Importantly, this learning deficit was specific to gesture, as these children did benefit from doing the comparison manipulative action. Our findings are the first evidence that a child's use of a particular representational format for communication (gesture) directly predicts that child's propensity to learn from using the same representational format.

With the widespread use of masks in the COVID-19 pandemic, it is crucial to understand how emotion recognition is affected by partial face covering. Since individuals with autism spectrum condition often tend to look at the lower half of the face, they are likely to be particularly restricted in emotion recognition by people wearing masks, since they are now forced to look at the upper half of the face. This study compared the recognition of basic and complex emotions in individuals with and without autism spectrum condition, when faces were presented uncovered, with face masks, or with sunglasses. We also used eye tracking to examine group differences in gaze patterns during emotion recognition. Individuals with autism spectrum condition were less accurate at recognizing emotions in all three conditions. Averaged across the three stimulus types, individuals with autism spectrum condition had greater difficulty recognizing anger, fear, pride, and embarrassment than control group. There was no group difference in emotion recognition between the three conditions. However, compared to individuals without autism spectrum condition, there was no evidence of either gaze avoidance or preference for the mouth region. Our results suggest that emotion recognition is reduced in individuals with autism spectrum condition, but this is not due to differences in gaze patterns.