Do naps benefit novel word learning? Developmental differences and white matter correlates.

Memory representations of newly learned words undergo changes during nocturnal sleep, as evidenced by improvements in explicit recall and lexical integration (i.e., after sleep, novel words compete with existing words during online word recognition).

Neural Responses to Novel and Existing Words in Children with Autism Spectrum and Developmental Language Disorder.

The formation of new phonological representations is key in establishing items in the mental lexicon. Phonological forms become stable with repetition, time and sleep. Atypicality in the establishment of new word forms is characteristic of children with developmental language disorder (DLD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD), yet neural changes in response to novel word forms over time have not yet been directly compared in these groups.

UK children's sleep and anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background: Sleep and mental wellbeing are intimately linked. This relationship is particularly important to understand as it emerges over childhood. Here we take the opportunity that the COVID-19 pandemic, and resulting lockdown in the UK, presented to study sleep-related behaviour and anxiety in school-aged children.

Stronger Associations Between Sleep and Mental Health in Adults with Autism: A UK Biobank Study.

This study examined sleep and its cognitive and affective correlates in adults with and without autism spectrum disorder (ASD), utilizing UK Biobank data. There were no group differences in subjective sleep duration [n = 220 ASD; n = 2200 general population (GP)]. Accelerometer measures of sleep duration or nighttime activity did not differ by group, but sleep efficiency was marginally lower in ASD (n = 83 ASD; n = 824 GP).

Timing storytime to maximize children's ability to retain new vocabulary.

Shared storybook reading is a key aid to vocabulary acquisition during childhood. However, word learning research has tended to use unnaturalistic (explicit) training regimes. Using a storybook paradigm, we examined whether children (particularly those with weaker vocabularies) are more likely to retain new words if they learn them closer to sleep.

Does the maturation of early sleep patterns predict language ability at school entry? A Born in Bradford study.

Children's vocabulary ability at school entry is highly variable and predictive of later language and literacy outcomes. Sleep is potentially useful in understanding and explaining that variability, with sleep patterns being predictive of global trajectories of language acquisition. Here, we looked to replicate and extend these findings.

Growing up with interfering neighbours: the influence of time of learning and vocabulary knowledge on written word learning in children.

Evidence suggests that new vocabulary undergoes a period of strengthening and integration offline, particularly during sleep. Practical questions remain, however, including whether learning closer to bedtime can optimize consolidation, and whether such an effect varies with vocabulary ability. To examine this, children aged 8-12-years-old ( 59) were trained on written novel forms (e.

Sleep Promotes Phonological Learning in Children Across Language and Autism Spectra.

Purpose Establishing stable and flexible phonological representations is a key component of language development and one which is thought to vary across children with neurodevelopmental disorders affecting language acquisition. Sleep is understood to support the learning and generalization of new phonological mappings in adults, but this remains to be examined in children. This study therefore explored the time course of phonological learning in childhood and how it varies by structural language and autism symptomatology.

Atypicalities in sleep and semantic consolidation in autism.

Sleep is known to support the neocortical consolidation of declarative memory, including the acquisition of new language. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is often characterized by both sleep and language learning difficulties, but few studies have explored a potential connection between the two. Here, 54 children with and without ASD (matched on age, nonverbal ability and vocabulary) were taught nine rare animal names (e.

Learning to live with interfering neighbours: the influence of time of learning and level of encoding on word learning.

New vocabulary is consolidated offline, particularly during sleep; however, the parameters that influence consolidation remain unclear. Two experiments investigated effects of exposure level and delay between learning and sleep on adults' consolidation of novel competitors (e.g.

Annual Research Review: Educational neuroscience: progress and prospects.

Educational neuroscience is an interdisciplinary research field that seeks to translate research findings on neural mechanisms of learning to educational practice and policy and to understand the effects of education on the brain. Neuroscience and education can interact directly, by virtue of considering the brain as a biological organ that needs to be in the optimal condition to learn ('brain health'); or indirectly, as neuroscience shapes psychological theory and psychology influences education. In this article, we trace the origins of educational neuroscience, its main areas of research activity and the principal challenges it faces as a translational field.

Visual Speech Perception in Children With Language Learning Impairments.

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to assess the ability of children with developmental language learning impairments (LLIs) to use visual speech cues from the talking face.

Method: In this cross-sectional study, 41 typically developing children (mean age: 8 years 0 months, range: 4 years 5 months to 11 years 10 months) and 27 children with diagnosed LLI (mean age: 8 years 10 months, range: 5 years 2 months to 11 years 6 months) completed a silent speechreading task and a speech-in-noise task with and without visual support from the talking face. The speech-in-noise task involved the identification of a target word in a carrier sentence with a single competing speaker as a masker.

The over-pruning hypothesis of autism.

This article outlines the over-pruning hypothesis of autism. The hypothesis originates in a neurocomputational model of the regressive sub-type (Thomas, Knowland & Karmiloff-Smith, 2011a, 2011b). Here we develop a more general version of the over-pruning hypothesis to address heterogeneity in the timing of manifestation of ASD, including new computer simulations which reconcile the different observed developmental trajectories (early onset, late onset, regression) via a single underlying atypical mechanism; and which show how unaffected siblings of individuals with ASD may differ from controls either by inheriting a milder version of the pathological mechanism or by co-inheriting the risk factors without the pathological mechanism.

Audio-visual speech perception: a developmental ERP investigation.

Being able to see a talking face confers a considerable advantage for speech perception in adulthood. However, behavioural data currently suggest that children fail to make full use of these available visual speech cues until age 8 or 9. This is particularly surprising given the potential utility of multiple informational cues during language learning.

Modeling mechanisms of persisting and resolving delay in language development.

PURPOSE In this study, the authors used neural network modeling to investigate the possible mechanistic basis of developmental language delay and to test the viability of the hypothesis that persisting delay and resolving delay lie on a mechanistic continuum with normal development. METHOD The authors used a population modeling approach to study individual rates of development in 1,000 simulated individuals acquiring a notional language domain (in this study, represented by English past tense). Variation was caused by differences in internal neurocomputational learning parameters as well as the richness of the language environment.

Mechanisms of developmental regression in autism and the broader phenotype: a neural network modeling approach.

Loss of previously established behaviors in early childhood constitutes a markedly atypical developmental trajectory. It is found almost uniquely in autism and its cause is currently unknown (Baird et al., 2008).

A viewpoint-independent process for spatial reorientation.

Reorientation tasks, in which disoriented participants attempt to relocate objects using different visual cues, have previously been understood to depend on representing aspects of the global organisation of the space, for example its major axis for judgements based on geometry. Careful analysis of the visual information available for these tasks shows that successful performance could be based on the much simpler process of storing a visual 'snapshot' at the target location, and subsequently moving in order to match it. We tested 4-8-year olds on a new spatial reorientation task that could not be solved based on information directly contained in any retinal projection that they had been exposed to, but required participants to infer how the space is structured.