Narrative skills play a crucial role in organizing experience, facilitating social interaction and building academic discourse and literacy. They are at the interface of cognitive, social, and linguistic abilities related to school engagement. Despite their relative strengths in social and grammatical skills, students with Williams syndrome (WS) do not show parallel cognitive and pragmatic performance in narrative generation tasks. The aim of the present study was to assess retelling of a TV cartoon tale and the effect of an individualized explicit instruction of the narrative structure. Participants included eight students with WS who attended different special education levels. Narratives were elicited in two sessions (pre and post intervention), and were transcribed, coded and analyzed using the tools of the CHILDES Project. Narratives were coded for productivity and complexity at the microstructure and macrostructure levels. Microstructure productivity (i.e., length of narratives) included number of utterances, clauses, and tokens. Microstructure complexity included mean length of utterances, lexical diversity and use of discourse markers as cohesive devices. Narrative macrostructure was assessed for textual coherence through the Pragmatic Evaluation Protocol for Speech Corpora (PREP-CORP). Macrostructure productivity and complexity included, respectively, the recall and sequential order of scenarios, episodes, events and characters. A total of four intervention sessions, lasting approximately 20 min, were delivered individually once a week. This brief intervention addressed explicit instruction about the narrative structure and the use of specific discourse markers to improve cohesion of story retellings. Intervention strategies included verbal scaffolding and modeling, conversational context for retelling the story and visual support with pictures printed from the cartoon. Results showed significant changes in WS students’ retelling of the story, both at macro- and microstructure levels, when assessed following a 2-week interval. Outcomes were better in microstructure than in macrostructure, where sequential order (i.e., complexity) did not show significant improvement. These findings are consistent with previous research supporting the use of explicit oral narrative intervention with participants who are at risk of school failure due to communication impairments. Discussion focuses on how assessment and explicit instruction of narrative skills might contribute to effective intervention programs enhancing school engagement in WS students.

Background. Self-evaluation or autonomous evaluation, understood as a practice in which students can judge their own achievements and reflect on them, is considered a key element in the assessment process of college education. A common procedure at University environments is to apply information and communication techniques to carry out self-assessment activities and record answers. The aim is to analyse if the e-self-assessment improves student performance, using tests for objective and short answers as a complementary activity in teaching through the virtual platform Moodle. Method. The sample consisted of 406 students of two subjects in the degree course for Primary and Early Childhood Education and in the degree course for Teacher of Primary Education; they had to fill in 100 question self-assessment questionnaires about the content of the subjects on the Moodle virtual learning platform and a satisfaction scale. Results. They confirm a high participation in this innovation methodology; the e-self assessment showed improvement of student achievement and increased the degree of student satisfaction. Conclusions. The e-self assessment would assist students to take an active role in their learning process, increase their achievement, promote their self-directed learning, and develop metacognitive skills.

Background: Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show certain characteristics in visual attention. These may generate differences with non-autistic children in the integration of relevant social information to set the basis of communication. Reliable and objective measurement of these characteristics in a language learning context could contribute to a more accurate early diagnosis of ASD. Gaze following and pupil dilation are being studied as possible reliable measures of visual attention for the early detection of ASD. The eye-tracking methodology allows objective measurement of these biomarkers. The aim of this study is to determine whether measurements of gaze following and pupillary dilation in a linguistic interaction task are potential objective biomarkers for the early diagnosis of ASD. Method: A group of 20 children between 17 and 24 months of age, made up of 10 neurotypical children (NT) and 10 children with an increased likelihood of developing ASD were paired together according to chronological age. A human face on a monitor pronounced pseudowords associated with pseudo-objects. Gaze following and pupil dilation were registered during the task These measurements were captured using eye-tracking methodology. Results: Significant statistical differences were found in the time of gaze fixation on the human face and on the object, as well as in the number of gazes. Children with an increased possibility of developing ASD showed a slightly higher pupil dilation than NT children. However, this difference was not statistically significant. Nevertheless, their pupil dilation was uniform throughout the different periods of the task while NT participants showed greater dilation on hearing the pseudoword. Conclusions: The fixing and the duration of gaze, objectively measured by a Tobii eye-tracking system, could be considered as potential biomarkers for early detection of ASD. Additionally, pupil dilation measurement could reflect differential activation patterns during word processing in possible ASD toddlers and NT toddlers.

En los últimos años se ha introducido la gamificación en las aulas, entendida como el uso de técnicas, elementos y dinámicas propias de los juegos en entornos ajenos al juego. En esta investigación, se ha utilizado una herramienta concreta de gamificación educativa, Kahoot!, plataforma gratuita que integra el juego en la actividad docente y requiere el uso de dispositivos móviles. Se trabajó con una muestra de 814 estudiantes de Educación Superior, de titulaciones, cursos y asignaturas diferentes en la rama de Ciencias Sociales. Cada grupo se dividió en grupo experimental (GE), encargado de realizar los kahoot, y grupo control (GC) que cursaban la asignatura pero no hacían los kahoot. El objetivo principal era mejorar el rendimiento de los alumnos universitarios con el empleo del kahoot. Los objetivos específicos propuestos eran fomentar la asistencia a las clases, reforzar la adquisición y el repaso de contenidos y conocer la opinión de los participantes. El ANOVA confirma que los estudiantes que realizaron los kahoot obtuvieron mejores calificaciones que los que no los habían hecho. Sin embargo, la realización de los kahoot por sí sola no es predictora del éxito académico. Pueden influir otras variables como la asistencia a las clases.

In the context of comparing linguistic profiles across neurodevelopmental disorders, Down syndrome (DS) has captured growing attention for its uneven profile. Although specific weaknesses in grammatical and phonological processing have been reported, research evidence on phonological development remains scarce, particularly beyond early childhood. The purpose of this study was to explore the phonological profiles of children and adolescents with Down syndrome. The profiles were based on the frequency and relative proportion of the processes observed by classes, and they were compared to those of typically developing preschool children of similar verbal age. A complementary goal was to assess the effect of two different methods of elicitation: a test of articulation and spontaneous speech sampling. Finally, intergroup and intragroup differences in full match percentages between three positions at syllable-level (complex onset, medial coda, and final coda) were assessed. The results of the present study confirmed that the frequency of phonological processes in children and adolescents with DS is atypically high and is above what is expected for lexical age and at the same level as grammatical age. Highly increased frequency of processes, consistent in all kinds of processes and positions at the syllable-level, and asynchronous with verbal age and mental age suggest atypical developmental trajectories of phonological development in the Down syndrome population.

Williams syndrome (WS) is a genetic disorder associated with intellectual disability and characterised by displaying an atypical neuropsychological profile, with peaks and valleys, where language skills seem better preserved than non-verbal intelligence. This study researches the narrative competence of nine Spanish-speaking adults with WS. Oral narratives were elicited from a silent film, and narrative coherence was analysed as a function of sequential order of the events narrated at three structure levels, while narrative cohesion was assessed through the frequency of use and type of discourse markers. WS subjects were able to remember a significant proportion of the events from the film, but coherence of narratives, i.e., sequential order of events, was more impaired. Consistently with their linguistic abilities, cohesion of narratives was better preserved, as they used discourse markers to introduce a high proportion of events. Construction of mental models of the narratives may be constrained in WS by non-verbal cognitive abilities, but narrative competence is also determined by textual pragmatic abilities to organize discourse, which should be addressed by specific intervention in narrative competence.