Teaching open and reproducible scholarship: a critical review of the evidence base for current pedagogical methods and their outcomes.

In recent years, the scientific community has called for improvements in the credibility, robustness and reproducibility of research, characterized by increased interest and promotion of open and transparent research practices. While progress has been positive, there is a lack of consideration about how this approach can be embedded into undergraduate and postgraduate research training. Specifically, a critical overview of the literature which investigates how integrating open and reproducible science may influence student outcomes is needed. In this paper, we provide the first critical review of literature surrounding the integration of open and reproducible scholarship into teaching and learning and its associated outcomes in students. Our review highlighted how embedding open and reproducible scholarship appears to be associated with (i) students' scientific literacies (i.e. students' understanding of open research, consumption of science and the development of transferable skills); (ii) student engagement (i.e. motivation and engagement with learning, collaboration and engagement in open research) and (iii) students' attitudes towards science (i.e. trust in science and confidence in research findings). However, our review also identified a need for more robust and rigorous methods within pedagogical research, including more interventional and experimental evaluations of teaching practice. We discuss implications for teaching and learning scholarship.

Virtual and Augmented Reality in Social Skills Interventions for Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Scoping Review.

In the last decade, there has been an increase in publications on technology-based interventions for autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Virtual reality based assessments and intervention tools are promising and have shown to be acceptable amongst individuals with ASD. This scoping review reports on 49 studies utilizing virtual reality and augmented reality technology in social skills interventions for individuals with ASD. The included studies mostly targeted children and adolescents, but few targeted very young children or adults. Our findings show that the mode number of participants with ASD is low, and that female participants are underrepresented. Our review suggests that there is need for studies that apply virtual and augmented realty with more rigorous designs involving established and evidenced-based intervention strategies.

Metaphor Comprehension in Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Core Language Skills Matter.

Poor metaphor comprehension was considered a hallmark of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but recent research has questioned the extent and the sources of these difficulties. In this cross-sectional study, we compared metaphor comprehension in individuals with ASD (N = 29) and individuals with typical development (TD; N = 31), and investigated the relationship between core language and metaphor comprehension. Individuals with ASD showed more difficulty but also a more variable performance in both metaphor and literal items of the task used than individuals with TD did. This indicates that core language ability accounts for metaphor comprehension and should be considered in future research and interventions aiming to improve metaphor comprehension in individuals with ASD.

Virtual reality and naturalistic developmental behavioral interventions for children with autism spectrum disorder.

BACKGROUND: Naturalistic Developmental Behavioral Interventions (NDBI) have been evaluated as the most promising interventions for children with autism spectrum disorder. In recent years, a growing body of literature suggests that technological advancements such as Virtual Reality (VR) are promising intervention tools. However, to the best of our knowledge no studies have combined evidence-based practice with such tools. AIM: This article aims to review the current literature combining NDBI and VR, and provide suggestions on merging NDBI-approaches with VR. METHODS: This article is divided into two parts, where we first conduct a review mapping the research applying NDBI-approaches in VR. In the second part we argue how to apply the common features of NDBI into VR-technology. RESULTS: Our findings show that no VR-studies explicitly rely on NDBI-approaches, but some utilize elements in their interventions that are considered to be common features to NDBI. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: As the results show, to date, no VR-based studies have utilized NDBI in their intervention. We therefore, in the second part of this article, suggests ways to merge VR and NDBI and introduce the term Virtual Naturalistic Developmental Behavioral Interventions (VNDBI). VNDBI is an innovative way of implementing NDBI which will contribute in making interventions more accessible in central as well as remote locations, while reducing unwanted variation between service sites. VNDBI will advance the possibilities of individually tailoring and widen the area of interventions. In addition, VNDBI can provide the field with new knowledge on effective components enhancing the accuracy in the intervention packages and thus move forward the research field and clinical practice.