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Visual perspective-taking is the ability to perceive the world from another person's perspective, and research on visual perspective-taking ability in children with autism spectrum conditions yielded inconsistent results. To solve a visual perspective-taking task, people can mentally rotate themselves to another person's location (embodied self-rotation strategy) or else rotate the object toward themselves (object-based mental rotation strategy). Previous interventions for autistic individuals have mainly focused on embodied self-rotation strategy, the visual perspective-taking mechanism in neurotypicals. This study examined the effects of both embodied self-rotation and object-based mental rotation strategies in improving visual perspective-taking performance in 34 autistic children and 34 ability-matched neurotypical children. All children completed three tasks: one measuring baseline visual perspective-taking performance, while the other two measuring visual perspective-taking performance after instructions in embodied self-rotation and object-based mental rotation strategies. The results indicated that autistic children had difficulty in baseline visual perspective-taking tasks. After a brief strategy learning period, autistic children benefited similarly from both embodied self-rotation and object-based mental rotation instructions, suggesting that there are various possible ways to improving autistic children's perspective taking, and that further interventions for autistic children could consider combining different strategies that better suit their autistic traits.

Laminar flow phenomena may occur when pore water flows at low velocities across the interfaces between soils of different properties, thus causing flow contact resistance. To explore the impacts of interfacial flow contact resistance and rheological characteristics on the thermal consolidation process of layered viscoelastic saturated soil foundation featuring semi‐permeable boundaries. This paper established a new thermal consolidation model by introducing a fractional order derivative model, Hagen–Poiseuille law and time‐dependent loadings. The semi‐analytical solutions for the proposed thermal consolidation model are derived through the Laplace transform and its inverse transform. The reliability and correctness of the solutions are verified with the experimental data in literatures. The influence of constitutive parameters, flow contact resistance model parameters on thermal consolidation process and the interfacial flow contact resistance on foundation settlement, is further explored. The results indicate that the impact of the constitutive parameters and permeability coefficient on the thermal consolidation of viscoelastic saturated soil is related to the flow contact resistance. The enhanced flow contact resistance effect leads to a significant increase in pore water pressure and displacement during the consolidation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The coupled thermal-hydro-mechanical (THM) analysis of saturated porous media is of great significance and has been widely used in various engineering fields. However, the classical Biot theory assumes that the physical parameters of porous media are constant and ignores the influence of pore size on wave propagation characteristics, which cannot reflect the actual situation. Based on the nonlocal theory and Biot wave equation, a nonlocal coupled Biot THM dynamic model for porous media with variable physical properties is established by introducing the temperature-dependent factor function. Utilizing the nonlocal coupled Biot THM theory, the dynamic response of forced convection in a half-space saturated porous media under surface harmonic thermal action is investigated in this paper. The analytical solutions of temperature increment, displacement, stress, and pore water pressure of saturated porous media are obtained by means of differential operator decomposition. In addition, the effects of the temperature-dependent factor and porosity on the nonlocal model at different frequencies, and the effects of the nonlocal parameter on the distribution rules of various physical fields at different frequencies are explored in depth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies have demonstrated that saturated normally consolidated and lightly over‐consolidated clays undergo contraction when heated due to a reduction in preconsolidation pressure. A linear constitutive model is proposed to describe the thermal contraction, with this model, governing equations are developed for the coupled thermo‐hydro‐mechanical (THM) consolidation induced by a prefabricated vertical thermo‐drain (PVTD). Corresponding semi‐analytical solutions are derived employing the Laplace transform and validated via comparison with experimental results, existing numerical model, and custom finite element method (FEM) model. Subsequently, comprehensive parametric analyses are carried out to investigate the THM coupling consolidation behaviors of the clays. Outcomes show that aside from surcharge load, generation of excess pore water pressure in soils can also be induced by thermal contraction, difference in thermal expansibility between pore water and soil grains, and thermo‐osmosis, where the influence of thermal contraction on the excess pore water pressure is the most prominent among the three factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study proposes a new non‐destructive testing method (NDT), namely the apparent wave velocity of piles (AWVP) inverse analysis method, to solve the detection problem of the gradually varying cross‐sectional defects (cracks or necking) and the material property defects (concrete disintegration or steel corrosion) of piles. The analytical solution of the AWVP has been derived based on the additional mass model. The rationality and accuracy of the theoretical model have been validated through the comparisons with the experiment results. The variation mechanism of the AWVP due to the presence of soil has been clarified. A parametric study is conducted to investigate the major factors to determine the variation tendency of the AWVP. The optimum working conditions and parameter combinations of the AWVP based NDT method have been recommend. The main conclusions can be drawn as: (1) the variation of the AWVP with respect to frequency can be generally divided into a sensitive zone and a stable zone. (2) The AWVP initially decreases rapidly with the frequency within the sensitive zone, however when the frequency decreases to the stable zone, this decline tendency becomes much smaller. (3) Although the AWVP varies extensively within the frequency sensitive zone, this frequency range can substantially relax the requirements for the parametric accuracy of the pile–soil system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]