Publications by authors named "Alexander Minnaert"

Background: Due to their dual sensory impairment, people with congenital deafblindness (CDB) are rarely naturally involved in other people's conversations. Their communication partners find it challenging to include them in group conversations. However, overhearing others communicate is important for developing social and communication skills.

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Introduction: Paving the way towards inclusive education, it is essential to aim for positive social outcomes for all students, including cultivating a positive self-concept and fostering acceptance and friendships with peers. Although self-concept, acceptance and friendships are interrelated, research focussing on the relationship between these constructs remains limited.

Method: This study examined the self-concept, acceptance and friendships of two groups of typically developing students in secondary education (n = 401) and two groups of students in special secondary education with either an intellectual disability (ID) (n = 58) or social, emotional and behavioural difficulties (SEBD) (n = 68).

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Introduction: Why are some teachers more successful at motivating students than others? We know from previous literature that teachers' self-efficacy relates to the extent in which they engage in need-supportive teaching in the classroom, which in turn relates to student intrinsic motivation. However, teachers' self-efficacy is hypothesized to be dependent on their previous mastery experiences, e.g.

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This systematic review examined to what extent response demands of executive functioning (EF) tasks influence the relationship between motor performance and EF in 2- to 6-year-old typically developing (TD) children and children with motor coordination difficulties (MCD). Eighteen of the included articles focused on TD children only and three also on children with MCD. EF tasks were subdivided based on the type of responses (i.

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A promising approach for studying school readiness involves a person-centered approach, aimed at exploring how functioning in diverse developmental domains conjointly affects children's school outcomes. Currently, however, a systematic understanding lacks of how motor skills, in conjunction with other school readiness skills, affect a child's school outcomes. Additionally, little is known about longitudinal associations of school readiness with non-academic (e.

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Comparing motor assessment tools that are available for young children is important in order to select the most appropriate clinical and research tools. Hence, this study compared motor performance assessed with the Zurich Neuromotor Assessment-2 (ZNA-2) to the Movement Assessment Battery for Children-2 (MABC-2). The sample consisted of 169 children, aged 3-5 years (87 boys; 51%).

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Background: The support of people with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities (PIMD) rarely focused on motor activity, which might have negative consequences for the quality of life of these people. Evidence-based motor activity programs that present individually tailored and structural motor activity for these people are, regretfully, lacking. This study developed such a program for these people and evaluated the implementation process.

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There has been an increasing interest in the relationship between motor skills and executive functions (EFs) in young children over the years. However, no clear picture on the relationship between both domains has emerged from these studies. We have extended previous findings by conducting a comprehensive examination of task-specific and latent relationships between a range of motor skills and EFs in preschool children.

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Background: Valid measures to assess either small or assisted performed movements of people with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities (PIMD) are required. We analysed the construct validity of the Actiwatch-2 to assess movement in people with PIMD.

Method: Twenty-two persons with PIMD were video recorded while wearing an Actiwatch-2.

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This exploratory study conducts a quantitative investigation on the communication development of students with congenital deafblindness (CDB). First, a layered communication model (LCM) is introduced, describing communicative behaviors based on three layers of intersubjective development for typically developing children (Bråten & Trevarthen, 2007). Subsequently, an analysis is made of how applicable the LCM is for children with CDB.

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Gifted students who also have learning disabilities (G/LD) are often overlooked when students are assessed either for giftedness or specific learning disabilities. The cognitive and non-cognitive characteristics of these G/LD students are habitually discussed only briefly alongside identification and intervention issues and, beyond that, the relevance of non-cognitive characteristics is often left unconsidered. Accordingly, this study aims to conduct an in-depth review of the non-cognitive characteristics of these students for identification and intervention purposes.

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Because little is known about teacher-student relationships that involve students with acquired deafblindness, the authors performed a multiple case study with a multiple-method design to investigate the relationship between need-supportive teaching behaviors and student engagement. Using self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000), they analyzed video observations of interactions. It was found that teachers' provision of structure, autonomy support, and involvement often cooccurs with higher levels of student engagement.

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Employing a large sample of children from Dutch regular elementary schools, this study assessed the contributing and discriminating values of reading disability (RD) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) to two types of phonological processing skills, phonemic awareness (PA) and rapid automatized naming (RAN). A second objective was to investigate whether comorbidity of RD and ADHD should be considered as an additive phenomenon as to RAN and PA. A total of 1,262 children, aged 8 to 13 years, were classified as RD ( n = 121), ADHD ( n = 17), comorbid (RD+ADHD; n = 16), or control ( n = 1,108).

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Purpose: The objective of this study was to assess and compare the predictive values of group membership for rapid automatized naming (RAN) and phonemic awareness (PA) in Dutch school children with and without reading disabilities (RD) or specific language impairment (SLI).

Method: A composite word reading index and a formal SLI diagnosis were used to classify a total of 1,267 children aged 8 to 13 years old either as RD-only (n = 126), SLI-only (n = 21), comorbid (RD+SLI; n = 30), or typically developing (n = 1,090). RAN and PA were assessed with 4 standardized subtests.

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This study's research question was whether selective visual attention, and specifically the attentional blink (AB) as operationalized by a dual target rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task, can explain individual differences in word reading (WR) and reading-related phonological performances in typically developing children and reading-disabled subgroups. A total of 407 Dutch school children (Grades 3-6) were classified either as typically developing (n = 302) or as belonging to one of three reading-disabled subgroups: reading disabilities only (RD-only, n = 69), both RD and attention problems (RD+ADHD, n = 16), or both RD and a specific language impairment (RD+SLI, n = 20). The RSVP task employed alphanumeric stimuli that were presented in two blocks.

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In this study we examine the effectiveness of an intervention program to influence attitudes of elementary school students towards peers with intellectual, physical and severe physical and intellectual disabilities. A quasi-experimental longitudinal study was designed with an experimental group and a control group, both comprising two rural schools. An intervention program was developed for kindergarten (n(experimental) = 22, n(control) = 31) and elementary school students without disabilities (n(experimental) = 91, n(control) = 127) (age range 4-12 years old).

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The relationship between learning environment characteristics and academic engagement of 777 Grade 6 children located in 41 learning environments was explored. Questionnaires were used to tap learning environment perceptions of children, their academic engagement, and their ethnic-cultural background. The basis of the learning environment questionnaire was the International System for Teacher Observation and Feedback (ISTOF).

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Background: Recent literature on emotions in education has shown that competence- and value-related beliefs are important sources of students' emotions; nevertheless, the role of these antecedents in students' daily functioning in the classroom is not yet well-known. More importantly, to date we know little about intra-individual variability in students' daily emotions.

Aims: The objectives of the study were (1) to examine within-student variability in emotional experiences and (2) to investigate how competence and value appraisals are associated with emotions.

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Scores on a learning potential test (the Hessels Analogical Reasoning Test) were examined to assess how to provide a better estimate of the learning capacity of students with mild intellectual disabilities compared to IQ scores. As a criterion, a dynamic test of chemistry learning was used. 46 adolescents from a special education institute participated.

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Although a bulk of literature shows that perceived social support (PSS) influences academic achievement, the mechanisms through which this effect operates received little empirical attention. The present study examined the multiple mediational effects of motivational beliefs (competence beliefs and subjective value) and emotions (anxiety and enjoyment) that may account for the empirical link between PSS (from parents, peers and teachers) and mathematics achievement. The participants of the study were 238 grade 7 students (average age = 13.

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To prepare students for instructive collaboration, it is necessary to have insight into students' psychological needs and interest development. The framework of self-determination theory was used to conduct a field experiment involving 114 students in vocational education. These students followed a practical business course which required they work in small learning groups.

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The effect of test expectancy and test anxiety on the retention of prose is not yet profoundly examined in an ecologically valid learning context. The influence of test expectancy, test anxiety, and differences in intelligence on the retention of prose was addressed in the hypothesis that test anxiety would act as a moderator between test expectancy and memory retention of prose. Also examined was whether this relation would still be valid if differences in general intelligence were controlled.

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