Online education of students with mild intellectual disability and autism spectrum disorder during the COVID-19 pandemic in the opinion of teacher

Online education, introduced obligatorily during the COVID-19 pandemic, poses a great challenge for teachers, students and their parents. Children and adolescents with mild intellectual disability or with ASD, that due to their cognitive deficits need appropriate support, are in a particular difficult situation. The aim of the conducted research was to specify the possible problems of online education of students with mild intellectual disability and ASD in their teachers' opinion. The research consisted in answering the questions from an online questionnaire. 114 teachers teaching children and adolescents with mild intellectual disability and 114 teachers teaching children and adolescents with ASD participated in the research. The results show that according to the teachers the biggest problems of students with mild intellectual disability and ASD are: understanding and remembering new material, lack of contact with their peers. Students with ASD are characterized by significantly greater intensity of the occurrence of difficulties in the area of education than people with mild intellectual disability. Difficulties in both groups of examined children and adolescents oblige to appropriately support them in online education and cooperation with their parents.

Investigating psychological characteristics of self-regulation in schoolchildren with cognitive disorders

Introduction. The authors investigate psychological characteristics of self-regulation in primary schoolchildren with cognitive impairments. The purpose of the article is to identify key determinants of the manifestation of self-regulation as the leading mechanism of adaptation. The results obtained can contribute to developing psychological support programs within school conditions and facilitate adaptive strategies of behavior and components of self-regulation. Materials and Methods. The methodological foundations of the research included leading positions of psychology about the formation of the behavior of children with cognitive disabilities. The research was carried out in the logic of the ascertaining psychological and educational experiment; the material obtained from the collection of empirical data was analyzed and generalized. The sample consisted of 456 schoolchildren aged between 8 and 11 years, who were divided into three groups: NID (normal intellectual development), MR (mental retardation) and MID (mild intellectual disability). The data obtained were interpreted and subjected to statistical analysis using various methods of mathematical and statistical processing: the reliability of differences according to statistical criteria, the F * angular transformation, the criterion for comparing the distribution of Pearson χ2 levels, correlation analysis, and the method of correlation pleiades. Results. The research findings include identifying the main psychological characteristics of self-regulation in primary schoolchildren with cognitive impairment. The research data enabled to develop self-regulation skills in schoolchildren with cognitive impairment. The results obtained are considered as a socio-psychological resource for improving cognitive health in primary schoolchildren. Conclusions. The study concludes that after identifying the psychological characteristics of self-regulation in primary schoolchildren with impaired cognitive health, it is possible to develop programs of psychological assistance for educational settings. The research data can be used within educational settings teaching children with cognitive disabilities to increase the effectiveness of classroom and extracurricular activities and their successful integration into society.

Students With Mild Intellectual Disability at the Turn of the 20th Century in Hungary

Initial attempts to conceptually define intellectual disability have played a significant role in the history of education of children with intellectual disabilities. In Hungary, the definition of intellectual disability has undergone many changes, which is related to disciplinary development. Nowadays, in special education, the term “intellectual disability” refers to a complex phenomenon which is reflected, for example, in the significant variability on the level of intellectual functioning. This study focuses on a narrower area of this very complex phenomenon. It makes children with mild intellectual disability – one of the categories of people with intellectual disabilities, the subject of analysis. The research analyzes the contemporary professional terminology and classification of mild intellectual disability on the basis of primary sources. It also examines whom and according to what symptoms professionals classified as a member of this student population, taking into account the scientific conceptions at the turn of the 20th century (for the naming of children with mild intellectual disability, see pp. 19–20). In pedagogical narratives published at that time, the term “weak- talented child” was the most commonly used expression.

Integrating Whole-Genome Sequencing in Clinical Genetics: A Novel Disruptive Structural Rearrangement Identified in the Dystrophin Gene (DMD)

While in most patients the identification of genetic alterations causing dystrophinopathies is a relatively straightforward task, a significant number require genomic and transcriptomic approaches that go beyond a routine diagnostic set-up. In this work, we present a Becker Muscular Dystrophy patient with elevated creatinine kinase levels, progressive muscle weakness, mild intellectual disability and a muscle biopsy showing dystrophic features and irregular dystrophin labelling. Routine molecular techniques (Southern-blot analysis, multiplex PCR, MLPA and genomic DNA sequencing) failed to detect a defect in the DMD gene. Muscle DMD transcript analysis (RT-PCR and cDNA-MLPA) showed the absence of exons 75 to 79, seen to be present at the genomic level. These results prompted the application of low-coverage linked-read whole-genome sequencing (WGS), revealing a possible rearrangement involving DMD intron 74 and a region located upstream of the PRDX4 gene. Breakpoint PCR and Sanger sequencing confirmed the presence of a ~8 Mb genomic inversion. Aberrant DMD transcripts were subsequently identified, some of which contained segments from the region upstream of PRDX4. Besides expanding the mutational spectrum of the disorder, this study reinforces the importance of transcript analysis in the diagnosis of dystrophinopathies and shows how WGS has a legitimate role in clinical laboratory genetics.

Teaching Students With Mild Intellectual Disability to Solve Word Problems Using Schema-Based Instruction

This study, which used a multiple baseline across students’ design, examines the effectiveness of a modified schema-based instructional approach to improve the mathematical word problem-solving performance of three students with mild intellectual disability, two of them with autism spectrum disorder. Following the intervention, the three students improved their performance when solving addition and subtraction change word problems; however, their performance was inconsistent with change word problems. The effects of the instruction were generalized to two-step addition and subtraction word problems for the three participants. Moreover, the results were generalized to an untrained setting and were maintained 8 weeks after the instruction. The implications of these findings for teaching problem-solving skills to students with intellectual disability are discussed.