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Separate contributions of general intelligence and right prefrontal neurocognitive functions to academic achievement at university level
We examined the ability of an IQ test (the WAIS-IV) to predict grade point averages (GPA) in a sample of 64 undergraduate students. We also included a battery of five neuropsychological assessments of frontal-lobe functions, all known to be unrelated to general intelligence and linked to right-prefrontal function. Regression analysis with stepwise entry of variables revealed separate contributions to the variation in GPA scores explained by general intelligence and two different measures of response inhibition (Stop-signal and Hayling). The addition of the inhibition measures more than doubled the amount of variance in GPA...
Source: Trends in Neuroscience and Education - July 5, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: research

Learning handwriting at school – A Teachers´ survey on actual problems and future options
Publication date: Available online 1 July 2016 Source:Trends in Neuroscience and Education Author(s): Christian Marquardt, Marianela Diaz Meyer, Manuela Schneider, René Hilgemann Objective of this study was to capture the current problem situation in German primary and secondary schools with regard to handwriting. Understanding of the causes of handwriting problems are necessary in order to develop sustainable solutions to make the teaching of handwriting more effective and to enable more appropriate writing materials to be designed. In total, 1,907 teachers throughout Germany took part in the survey. In the o...
Source: Trends in Neuroscience and Education - July 3, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: research

Pen or keyboard in beginning writing instruction? Some perspectives from embodied cognition
Publication date: Available online 2 July 2016 Source:Trends in Neuroscience and Education Author(s): Anne Mangen, Lillian Balsvik Reading and writing are increasingly digitized at all levels of education, and in beginning writing instruction, children are often introduced to writing by using keyboards rather than by pen-and-paper handwriting. The short-term and long-term cognitive, educational and socio-cultural implications of such a transition are largely unknown. In this article, we discuss some urgent questions relating to the ongoing marginalization of handwriting. By reference to extant research particularly...
Source: Trends in Neuroscience and Education - July 3, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: research

Technology and Note-Taking in the Classroom, Boardroom, Hospital Room, and Courtroom
Publication date: Available online 16 June 2016 Source:Trends in Neuroscience and Education Author(s): Pam A. Mueller, Daniel M. Oppenheimer To date, technological interventions in note taking have been generally unsuccessful in improving performance. One reason for this lack of success may be that developers focus on making note-taking easier, while neglecting how the technologies could affect the other psychological processes underlying effective note taking. Importantly, since note-taking serves different purposes in different situations, the effectiveness of various technologies will also be situationally depen...
Source: Trends in Neuroscience and Education - June 15, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: research

Neurocognitive mechanisms of the “testing effect”: A review
Publication date: Available online 2 June 2016 Source:Trends in Neuroscience and Education Author(s): Gesa van den Broek, Atsuko Takashima, Carola Wiklund-Hörnqvist, Linnea Karlsson Wirebring, Eliane Segers, Ludo Verhoeven, Lars Nyberg Memory retrieval is an active process that can alter the content and accessibility of stored memories. Of potential relevance for educational practice are findings that memory retrieval fosters better retention than mere studying. This so-called testing effect has been demonstrated for different materials and populations, but there is limited consensus on the neurocognitiv...
Source: Trends in Neuroscience and Education - June 13, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: research

Technologies shape sensorimotor skills and abilities
Publication date: Available online 4 June 2016 Source:Trends in Neuroscience and Education Author(s): Herbert Heuer Humans shape their environment more than any other species does, and the environment, in turn, shapes the profile of human skills. In spite of the general specificity of practice of sensorimotor skills, the waxing and waning of specific skills goes along with modulations of a broader range of skills or sensorimotor abilities. This is illustrated by two examples. The first one is the death of handwriting, which is associated with a reduction of the quality of arm-hand motor control in the production of f...
Source: Trends in Neuroscience and Education - June 13, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: research

Reconciling Individual Differences with Collective Needs: The Juxtaposition of Sociopolitical and Neuroscience Perspectives on Remediation and Compensation of Student Skill Deficits
Publication date: Available online 29 April 2016 Source:Trends in Neuroscience and Education Author(s): James B. Hale, S.H. Annabel Chen, Seng Chee Tan, Kenneth Poon, Kim R. Fitzer, Lara A. Boyd The increasingly diverse student population within classrooms potentially stretches the competencies of every teacher. Differentiated instruction has been offered to help teachers accommodate diverse learners, but most instructional strategies are typically directed at compensating for–not remediating– cognitive and academic skill deficits. This differentiated instruction approach is contrasted with the extant l...
Source: Trends in Neuroscience and Education - April 28, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: research

Outsourcing the mental? from knowledge-on-demand to Morbus google
Publication date: Available online 26 February 2016 Source:Trends in Neuroscience and Education Author(s): Manfred Spitzer Based on John von Neumann’s descriptions of the principle architecture of computers and brains more than half a century ago, we have learnt a lot more about their functioning. In contrast to computers, which contain different modules for the processing and storage of information, in brains the processing and storage of information are carried out by the same structures, i.e., neurons. As a consequence, brain function gets better with more storage, i.e., the more knowledge a person has. Brains d...
Source: Trends in Neuroscience and Education - February 28, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: research

Being physically active versus watching physical activity – effects on inhibitory control
Publication date: Available online 24 February 2016 Source:Trends in Neuroscience and Education Author(s): Markus Wolfgang Hermann Spitzer, Marco Furtner A comparison between the effects of the same type of physical activity being executed and watched on television on inhibitory control, the ability to focus on the relevant stimuli and disregard distraction, does not exist so far. Trying to close this gap, we tested 24 students on their inhibition control with the Erickson flanker task before and after a basketball session and a watching basketball on TV session, for 30minutes respectively, in a within subjects cro...
Source: Trends in Neuroscience and Education - February 24, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: research

Training numerical skills with the adaptive videogame “The number Race”: A randomized controlled trial on preschoolers
Publication date: Available online 11 February 2016 Source:Trends in Neuroscience and Education Author(s): Francesco Sella, Patrizio Tressoldi, Daniela Lucangeli, Marco Zorzi Adaptive computer games offer an attractive method for numeracy training in young children. However, the evidence for transfer of learning to standard measures of numerical and arithmetic skills is scarce. We carried out a randomized controlled trial on a sample of preschool children of middle socio-economic status to evaluate the effectiveness of the freeware videogame “The Number Race” (Wilson et al., 2006). Children were randomly as...
Source: Trends in Neuroscience and Education - February 11, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: research

Translating the neuroscience of physical activity to education
Publication date: Available online 9 February 2016 Source:Trends in Neuroscience and Education Author(s): Brian M. Gearin, Hank Fien Over the past two decades, a body of research has emerged that suggests that physical activity has beneficial effects on the brain’s structure and function. During the same period, concern has mounted over high rates of childhood obesity. Considering that schools have been called on to both improve academic achievement and childhood obesity rates, it is surprising that schools have not exploited research on physical activity’s cognitive effects. However, a closer examination of th...
Source: Trends in Neuroscience and Education - February 10, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: research

Mindfulness training with adolescents enhances metacognition and the inhibition of irrelevant stimuli: Evidence from event-related brain potentials
Publication date: Available online 29 January 2016 Source:Trends in Neuroscience and Education Author(s): Kevanne Louise Sanger, Dusana Dorjee With the increased interest in school-based mindfulness interventions, there have been repeated calls to investigate neurodevelopmental markers of change. This non-randomised study of 16-18 year olds with wait-list control group examined possible enhancements to brain indexes of attention processing after school-based mindfulness training using event-related potentials (ERPs) (N=47 for self-report; N=40 for ERPs). Results showed significantly more negative N2 amplitudes afte...
Source: Trends in Neuroscience and Education - January 30, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: research

Corrigendum to “Walk the number line – An embodied training of numerical concepts” [Trends Neurosci. Educ. 2/2 (2013) 74–84]
Publication date: Available online 3 December 2015 Source:Trends in Neuroscience and Education Author(s): Tanja Link, Korbinian Moeller, Stefan Huber, Ursula Fischer, Hans-Christoph Nuerk (Source: Trends in Neuroscience and Education)
Source: Trends in Neuroscience and Education - December 4, 2015 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: research

M-Learning? When it comes to learning, smartphones are a liability, not an asset
Publication date: Available online 1 December 2015 Source:Trends in Neuroscience and Education Author(s): Manfred Spitzer (Source: Trends in Neuroscience and Education)
Source: Trends in Neuroscience and Education - December 2, 2015 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: research

Emotional engagement in kindergarten and school children: A self-determination theory perspective
Publication date: Available online 3 November 2015 Source:Trends in Neuroscience and Education Author(s): Judith Streb, Oliver Keis, Maren Lau, Katrin Hille, Manfred Spitzer, Zrinka Sosic-Vasic Following self-determination theory [10] we analyzed whether childrens' emotional arousal – operationalized by ambulatory assessed additional heart rate increase – is affected by satisfaction of basic psychological needs, namely social relatedness, autonomy, and competence. Physical activity and heart rate of 16 German kindergarten and 48 school children were monitored throughout the time they spent at the educat...
Source: Trends in Neuroscience and Education - November 20, 2015 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: research