¿SE ENCUENTRAN LOS ESCOLARES QUE RECIBEN APOYO EDUCATIVO EN SITUACIÓN DE MAYOR RIESGO DE PRESENTAR DIFICULTADES DE APRENDIZAJE EN LA ESCRITURA?

DOES STUDENTS THAT RECEIVE ADDITIONAL SUPPORT NEEDS WITH HIGHER RISK FOR LEARNING DISABILITIES IN WRITING?Nowadays, writing is considered as a complex cognitive process in which several factors are involved that lead to a right writing use in adult age. This process is set up by different sub-processes, between which we can highlight transcription. The transcription skill takes a relevant place in writing acquisition, being of a special importance in the school beginning. If children are imprecise and slow in the transcription process it can lead to a serious setback in to their composition ability and quality. Transcription has a significant effect into the global writing and the academic efficiency in school age even that is considered as a powerful predictor to identify children that are more likely to show severe deficit in the acquisition of writing skills. A discovery that strengthen the importance of identifying writing difficulties as soon as possible. It should be added that nowadays writing teaching at the beginning is focused almost, solely and exclusively, in the most formal text aspects, just like handwriting or legibility, excluding fluency instruction. The current study analyzes the differences in writing fluency and accuracy between children that receive educational support because of their backwardness in the education program and normally achieving children. For this purpose , we selected a sample of 181 normally achieving children and 181 children receiving educational support, belonging to Primary Education and whose ages are in 6 – 9 years old range. Obtained results show that children that receive educational support present a lack of writing fluency and accuracy, problems that without an appropriate instruction could lead in future writing difficulties.Key-words: fluency, accuracy, writing, educational support, transcription, early identification.Resumen:Actualmente la escritura es considerada como un proceso cognitivo complejo en el que intervienen diversos factores que conducen a un correcto uso de la escritura en la edad adulta. Este proceso está formado por distintos subprocesos. Entre ellos cabe destacar la transcripción. La capacidad de transcripción adquiere un papel importante en la adquisición de la escritura, siendo de especial importancia en el inicio de la escolaridad. Si los niños son lentos e inexactos en el proceso de la transcripción conlleva a que su capacidad y calidad compositiva global en la producción de textos se vea gravemente perjudicada. La transcripción tiene un efecto significativo sobre la escritura global y el rendimiento académico de los niños en edad escolar, tanto es así que es considerada como un potente predictor para identificar a niños en riesgo de desarrollar déficits más graves en la escritura. Un hallazgo que refuerza la importancia de identificar las dificultades de escritura tan pronto como sea posible. A esto, hay que añadir que actualmente la enseñanza de la escritura en los primeros años de escolaridad se centra casi única y exclusivamente en los aspectos más formales del texto como la caligrafía o la legibilidad, excluyendo la instrucción en la fluidez. La presente investigación analiza las diferencias entre niños que reciben apoyo educativo por presentar retraso en la adquisición de las competencias del currículo escolar con niños que no lo reciben, considerando la fluidez y la exactitud en la escritura. Para ello se seleccionó una muestra de 181 alumnos que reciben apoyo educativo y 181 alumnos que no lo reciben, pertenecientes a los tres primeros cursos de Educación Primaria y cuyas edades oscilan entre 6 y 9 años. Los resultados obtenidos muestran que los niños que reciben apoyo educativo, aún recibiendo este apoyo, presentan mayores carencias en la fluidez y exactitud en la escritura, carencias que sin una apropiada instrucción podrían desembocar en futuras dificultades de aprendizaje en escritura.Palabras-clave: fluidez, exactitud, escritura, apoyo educativo, transcripción, identificación temprana.

Defective Number Sense or Impaired Access? Differential Impairments in Different Subgroups of Children With Mathematics Difficulties

Developmental dyscalculia (DD) is a specific learning disability in mathematics that affects around 6% of the population. Currently, the core deficit of DD remains unknown. While the number sense deficit hypothesis suggests that the core deficit of DD lies in the inability to represent nonsymbolic numerosity, the access deficit hypothesis suggests that the origin of this disability lies in the inability to associate numbers with the underlying magnitude representation. The present study compared the performance of DDs with their low-achieving (LA) and normally achieving peers in nonsymbolic numerosity processing and number-magnitude mapping over 1 year (from kindergarten to 1st grade). The results demonstrated differential impairments in different subgroups of children with mathematics difficulties. While DDs showed deficits in both nonsymbolic numerosity processing and number-magnitude mapping, LAs showed deficit only in the number-magnitude mapping. Furthermore, the deficit in number-magnitude mapping among the DD group was partially explained by their number sense deficit. The number sense deficit hypothesis is supported. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Experimental Research of the Performance of the Integrated Piston-Plunger Pump

The integrated piston-plunger pump integrated the piston engine and plunger pump technology as a whole. The hydrodynamic power was produced by the piston reciprocating rectilinear motion. The test showed that output pressure of the total working conditions of the pump was improved by 15.21% to 76.61%, output flow reduced by 0.69% to 2.13% and output power increased by 13.63% to 74.75%, compared with piston engine driving piston pump system. The rated output index was achieved under the 80% throttle, the output pressure of 1.15MPa, the output flow of 4.8m3/h and the corresponding rotate speed of the pump about 1900r/min. The integrated piston-plunger pump had correct working principle and operates normally, achieving the desired design function.

Social Cognition and Its Relation to Psychosocial Adjustment in Children With Nonverbal Learning Disabilities

The current study examined social cognitive skills in children with nonverbal learning disabilities (NLD) compared to normally achieving (NA) children. The relation between social cognitive skills and psychosocial adjustment was also investigated. There were no group differences on children’s ability to represent orally presented social vignettes. Children with NLD were less able to recognize self-generated competent/assertive responses as the best solutions to a problem, expected fewer positive and more negative outcomes for examiner-provided competent responses, and showed a trend toward more frequently judging a story character as being mean. A social problem solving factor predicted unique variance in psychosocial adjustment beyond variance accounted for by nonverbal intelligence and nonverbal social cue interpretation. Results are discussed within a framework for which social cognitive deficits more broadly defined than encoding and interpreting nonverbal social cues contribute to the psychosocial adjustment problems of children with NLD.

The Role of Print Exposure in ReadingSkills of Postsecondary Students With andWithout Reading Disabilities

Exposure to print is a significant predictor of vocabulary growth and declarative knowledge in normally achieving readers (Stanovich,West,&Harrison, 1995). Research has also shown that initial differences in print exposure can be used to predict differences in reading comprehension in children studied ten years after initial assessment (Cunningham & Stanovich, 1997). The present study seeks to broaden this research by using print exposure to explore similarities and differences in both reading comprehension and vocabulary in a sample of students with well-documented learning disabilities in the area of reading (RD), and a control group without reading disabilities. Print exposure was related to untimed reading comprehension scores and vocabulary scores for the students with RD and to timed comprehension scores and vocabulary scores for the control group.