The comprehension of connectives is crucial for understanding the discourse relations that make up a text. We studied connective comprehension in English to investigate whether adult comprehenders acquire the meaning and intended use of connectives to a similar extent and how connective features and individual differences impact connective…

Background: A fundamental aim of standardized educational assessment is to achieve reliable discrimination between students differing in the knowledge, skills and abilities assessed. However, questions of the purity with which these tests index students' genuine abilities have arisen. Specifically, literacy and numeracy assessments may also engage…

In an experimental study to explain the effect of structured Building Block Play with LEGO™ bricks on 6-year-old student mathematics achievement and in the areas of logical thinking, divergent thinking, nonverbal reasoning, and mental imagery, students in the experimental group scored significantly higher (p = 0.05) in mathematics achievement and…

This study examined performance on transitive inference problems in children with developmental dyscalculia (DD), typically developing controls matched on IQ, working memory and reading skills, and in children with outstanding mathematical abilities. Whereas mainstream approaches currently consider DD as a domain-specific deficit, we hypothesized…

The Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices (RSPM) is a 60-item test for measuring abstract reasoning, considered a nonverbal estimate of fluid intelligence, and often included in clinical assessment batteries and research on patients with cognitive deficits. The goal was to develop and apply a predictive model approach to reduce the number of items…

Outreach activities, like mobile science exhibitions, give opportunities to hands-on experiences in an attractive learning environment. We analysed attitudes, motivation and learning during a science exhibition visit, their relations to gender and future educational plans in Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Belgium (N = 1210 sixth-graders). Pupils'…

Asperger's disorder is one of autistic spectrum disorders; sharing clinical features with autism, but without developmental delay in language acquisition. There have been some studies of intellectual functioning in autism so far, but very few in Asperger's disorder. In the present study, we investigated abstract reasoning ability, whose form of…