Educational neuromyths and instructional practices: The case of inclusive education teachers in Hong Kong.

BACKGROUND: Educational neuromyths are known to exist amongst teachers in Western countries, and some researchers argue that neuromyths may affect classroom teaching. METHOD: An online survey was designed and distributed to sixty-four Hong Kong inclusive education teachers. Descriptive statistics, Pearson's correlation, Hierarchical Multiple Regression, and Thematic analysis were used to analyzed the collected data. RESULTS: First, there is a relatively low prevalence of neuromyths among Hong Kong teachers. Second, neuromyths were not significantly correlated with inclusive teachers' instructional practices. Third, teachers' general knowledge of the brain was significantly correlated with neuromyths and is a significant predictor of neuromyths. Fourth, the work-related stress of teachers was the main barrier to learning about neuroscience and adopting evidence-based practices in classroom teaching in Hong Kong. CONCLUSION: Our findings raise awareness of environmental and cultural factors that need to be considered and might affect the prevalence of neuromyths studies in non-WEIRD contexts.

Implicit Statistical Learning Across Modalities and Its Relationship With Reading in Childhood.

Implicit statistical learning (ISL) describes our ability to tacitly pick up regularities from our environment therefore, shaping our behavior. A broad understanding of ISL incorporates a great range of possible computations, which render it highly relevant to reading. In the light of this hypothesized relationship, ISL performance was explored in young (M = 8.47 years) typical readers (N = 31) across three different modalities (i.e., visual, auditory, and tactile) using the Artificial Grammar Learning (AGL) paradigm. Adopting repeated measures and correlational designs, the obtained data revealed modality constraints: (1) above-chance performance was observed on the visual and tactile tasks but not on the auditory task, (2) there was no significant correlation of ISL performance across modalities, and (3) split-half reliability of visual and auditory tasks was reasonably high, yet for the tactile task it was close to zero. Evaluating the relation between ISL ability and language skills, we observed a positive correlation between visual ISL performance and phonological awareness. We discuss these findings in view of current perspectives on the nature of ISL and its potential involvement in mastering successful (i.e., accurate and fluent) reading.

Implicit learning and reading: insights from typical children and children with developmental dyslexia using the artificial grammar learning (AGL) paradigm.

We examined implicit learning in school-aged children with and without developmental dyslexia based on the proposal that implicit learning plays a significant role in mastering fluent reading. We ran two experiments with 16 typically developing children (9 to 11-years-old) and 16 age-matched children with developmental dyslexia using the artificial grammar learning (AGL) paradigm. In Experiment 1 (non-transfer task), children were trained on stimuli that followed patterns (rules) unknown to them. Subsequently, they were asked to decide from a novel set which stimuli follow the same rules (grammaticality judgments). In Experiment 2 (transfer task), training and testing stimuli differed in their superficial characteristics but followed the same rules. Again, children were asked to make grammaticality judgments. Our findings expand upon previous research by showing that children with developmental dyslexia show difficulties in implicit learning that are most likely specific to higher-order rule-like learning. These findings are discussed in relation to current theories of developmental dyslexia and of implicit learning.

Do children with developmental dyslexia have impairments in implicit learning?

We explored implicit learning in a group of typically developing and developmental dyslexic primary school children (9-12 y) using a modified artificial grammar learning task. Performance was calculated using two measures of performance: a perfect free recall (PFR) score and a grammaticality judgment score. Both groups of children required the same amount of exposure to memorize the items (i.e. PFR performance) (t((30))=1.620, p>0.05; p-value reported two-tailed). However, repeated measures ANOVA (Participant type x Grammaticality x Chunk strength) revealed a Participant type effect for grammaticality judgment scores (F((1,30))=4.521, p<0.05; p-value reported two-tailed). Typically developing children showed above chance performance in terms of both grammaticality and chunk strength of the stimuli. Children with developmental dyslexia on the other hand, failed to show implicit learning irrespective of the substring characteristics (i.e. grammaticality or chunk strength). We propose that children with developmental dyslexia may be impaired in their implicit rule abstraction mechanism, which can partially explain their persistent reading problems.

Artificial grammar learning in primary school children with and without developmental dyslexia.

This paper explores implicit learning in typically developing and primary school children (9-12 years old) with developmental dyslexia using an artificial grammar learning (AGL) task. Two experiments were conducted, which differed in time of presentation and nature of the instructional set (experiment 1--implicit instructions vs experiment 2--explicit instructions). Repeated measures analysis of variance (group x grammaticality x chunk strength) showed a group effect only in experiment 1 (implicit instructions), with only the typically developing children showing evidence of AGL. There was a grammaticality effect (adherence to the rules) for both groups in the two experimental situations. We suggest that the typically developing children exhibited intact implicit learning as manifested in AGL performance, whereas children with developmental dyslexia failed to provide such evidence due to possible mediating cognitive developmental factors.