text: National Association of Special Education Teachers: Week in Review - February 17, 2017
  Publications > Week in Review > Week in Review 2017 Archives > Week in Review - February 17, 2017
  February 17, 2017 Vol 13 Issue # 7
  Journal of the American Academy of Special Education Professionals ( JAASEP)
  A Comparative Study of Teachers' Pedagogical Competencies in Supporting Children with Learning Difficulties in Primary Schools in Ghana and Brunei Darussalam
  Effectiveness of Pearson's SuccessMaker Mathematics for Students with Disabilities
  Use of Social Narratives as an Evidence-Based Practice to Support Employment of Young Adults with ASD: Practitioner's Guide
  Children who were exposed to complications shortly before or during birth, including birth asphyxia and preeclampsia, were more likely to develop autism spectrum disorder, according to a Kaiser Permanente study published in the American Journal of Perinatology. For this retrospective study, researchers examined the electronic health records of 594,638 children born in Kaiser Permanente hospitals in Southern California between 1991 and 2009. During this time, 6,255 of these children were diagnosed with ASD, 37 percent of whom experienced perinatal complications. Researchers found that children exposed to complications during birth were at a 10 percent increased risk of developing ASD, compared to children who did not experience perinatal complications. Read More
  Study co-author Katri Räikkönen, from the University of Helsinki in Finland, and colleagues hypothesize that glycyrrhizin (the active ingredient in licorice) may interfere with fetal neurodevelopment by increasing levels of "the stress
  Previous studies have shown that adults and young people who are physically active have a lower risk of developing depression. But the same effect has not been studied in children -- until now. Results from a new study are showing that children receive the same beneficial effect from being active. We're talking about moderate to vigorous physical activity that leaves kids sweaty or out of breath. Researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and NTNU Social Research have followed hundreds of children over four years to see if they could find a correlation between physical activity and symptoms of depression. Read More
  In the summer of 2015, a team at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School reported restoring rudimentary hearing in genetically deaf mice using gene therapy. Now the Boston Children's research team reports restoring a much higher level of hearing -- down to 25 decibels, the equivalent of a whisper -- using an improved gene therapy vector developed at Massachusetts Eye and Ear. The new vector and the mouse studies are described in two back-to-back papers in
  Nature Biotechnology. While previous vectors have only been able to penetrate the cochlea's inner hair cells, the first Nature Biotechnology study showed that a new synthetic vector, Anc80, safely transferred genes to the hard-to-reach outer hair cells when introduced into the cochlea (see images). This study's three Harvard Medical School senior investigators were Jeffrey R. Holt PhD, of Boston Children's Hospital; Konstantina Stankovic, MD, PhD, of Mass. Eye and Ear and Luk H. Vandenberghe, PhD, who led Anc80's development in 2015 at Mass. Eye and Ear's Grousbeck Gene Therapy Center. Read More
  People who use British Sign Language (BSL) have better reaction times in their peripheral vision, a new study from the University of Sheffield has found. The findings, revealed by scientists from the University's Academic Unit of Ophthalmology and Orthoptics, show that hearing adults learning a visual-spatial language such as BSL has a positive impact on visual field response -- something which is highly beneficial in many sports and when driving. Dr. Charlotte Codina, lead author of the study and Lecturer in Orthoptics at the University of Sheffield, said: "We were surprised by the quicker response times of BSL interpreters, who haven't necessarily known sign language since childhood, but have improved their peripheral visual sensitivity in learning this visual language and using it daily. Read More
  Research on Short-Term Effects of Air Pollution on the Health of Airways of Children with Asthma and Other Chronic Respiratory Complaints
  Starting in 2017, researchers will commence their study in Eindhoven on the effects of days with high air pollution on respiratory complaints, medication use and lung function of children suffering from chronic respiratory complaints such as wheezing or asthma. Vera van Zoest, doctoral candidate at the Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) at the University of Twente is one of the researchers in the project. "We use the information of a high resolution network of air quality sensors in order to map air quality in space and time. By linking this information to the daily variation of asthma symptoms and lung function of children, we gain insight into the effect of air quality on the health of children suffering from asthma." Read More
  Anxiety in social situations is not a rare problem: Around one in ten people are affected by social anxiety disorder during their lifetime. Social anxiety disorder is diagnosed if fears and anxiety in social situations significantly impair everyday life and cause intense suffering. Talking in front of a larger group can be one typical feared situation. A study now reveals that the successful treatment of an anxiety disorder alters key brain structures that are involved in processing and regulating emotions. Read More
  During Low Vision Awareness Month, the National Eye Institute (NEI), part of the National Institutes of Health, is highlighting new technologies and tools in the works to help the 4.1 million Americans living with low vision or blindness. The innovations aim to help people with vision loss more easily accomplish daily tasks, from navigating office buildings to crossing a street. Many of the innovations take advantage of computer vision, a technology that enables computers to recognize and interpret the complex assortment of images, objects and behaviors in the surrounding environment. Read More
  If you know the answer, email us at contactus@naset.org by February 20, 2017. We will acknowledge your correct answer in the next edition of the Week in Review
  Balancing a country's need to make prescription drugs available to those in need while simultaneously curbing nonmedical use is one of our greatest challenges, according to a perspective article just published by Silvia Martins, MD, PhD, associate professor of Epidemiology at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and a colleague at American University of Beirut. The article published in World Psychiatry, the journal of the World Psychiatric Association, cites research finding increased rates of deaths worldwide from prescription opioids as high as 550 percent depending on country and time-period. For example, from 2000 to 2014, there was a 200 percent increase in overdose deaths due to opioid use. Read More
  Born too soon, she weighed just over 1 pound at birth and spent the first three months of her life in the neonatal intensive care unit, fighting to live. This tiny baby survived under the care of skilled medical professionals and was sent home with her teenage mother. Today, she's a high school student enrolled in a precollege program. But is it possible that she has health risks that relate to her early life experience? This baby is one example of a frequent and significant problem in the neonatal population -- poor growth following premature birth, "a condition for which causes, optimal management and long-term consequences are still not completely understood," said Dr. Marta Fiorotto, associate professor of pediatrics-nutrition and of molecular physiology and biophysics at the USDA/ Children's Nutrition Research Center at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital, in whose laboratory the research was performed. Read More
  A simple new questionnaire based on emoticon-style facial expressions could help teachers and others who work with children as young as four to engage them on their happiness and wellbeing levels in the classroom. The How I Feel About My School questionnaire, designed by experts at the University of Exeter Medical School, is available to download for free. It uses emoticon-style faces with options of happy, ok or sad. It asks children to rate how they feel in seven situations including on the way to school, in the classroom and in the playground. It is designed to help teachers and others to communicate with very young children on complex emotions. Read More
  It is like being in a dirty glass jar, unable to reach out and with acquaintances passing by without saying hello. New research from the Sahlgrenska Academy paints a merciless picture of life with acquired deaf-blindness. "These are people like you and me. They have a family, they have children, they have lived a normal life and suddenly they are hit by this disease and everything is upended," says Ann-Britt Johansson, a researcher within the field of neuroscience and physiology. Her thesis "See and hear me" is based on interviews with eight people, three women and five men, over a period of four years. Read More
  A research article published in PLOS Medicine contributes to the evidence base regarding the use of population charts for detection of fetal growth disorders and how best to determine risk of complications. In the article, Stamatina Iliodromiti from the University of Glasgow, UK, and colleagues found birth weight less than 25th or greater than 85th centile to be associated with greater risk of adverse outcomes compared with birth weight within these cutoffs, suggesting an expansion of the definition of 'fetus at risk' beyond the less than 10th or greater than 90th centile range that is commonly used to trigger surveillance of fetal well-being and/or delivery. In this study, the researchers used routinely collected data from 979,912 term singleton pregnancies over a 19-year period in Scotland and externally validated the findings in an independent UK cohort including 10,515 pregnancies. Read More
  Autism is not a single condition, but a spectrum of disorders that affect the brain's ability to perceive and process information. Recent research suggests that too many connections in the brain could be at least partially responsible for the symptoms of autism, from communication deficits to unusual talents. New research from the University of Maryland suggests that this overload of connections begins early in mammalian development, when key neurons in the brain region known as the cerebral cortex begin to form their first circuits. By pinpointing where and when autism-related neural defects first emerge in mice, the study results could lead to a stronger understanding of autism in humans -- including possible early intervention strategies. The researchers outline their findings in a research paper published January 31, 2017 in the journal Cell Reports. Read More
  A study that tracked hundreds of children from kindergarten through high school found that chronic or increasing levels of bullying were related to lower academic achievement, a dislike of school and low confidence by students in their own academic abilities, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association. While pop culture often depicts more frequent bullying in high school, the study found that bullying was more severe and frequent in elementary school and tended to taper off for most students as they got older. However, 24 percent of the children in the study suffered chronic bullying throughout their school years, which was consistently related to lower academic achievement and less engagement in school, said lead researcher Gary Ladd, PhD, a psychology professor at Arizona State University. Read More
  Las Vegas Struggles for Solutions to Special Education Teacher Shortage
  Ashlen Atkinson comes from a family of special education teachers. That's why it seemed natural for Atkinson, a first-year special education teacher at West Prep Academy in Las Vegas, to pursue the same career. "As a kid, I enjoyed being the tutor in the classroom," she said. "I would tutor the other students that might've been having difficulties with the material." Atkinson, a Las Vegas native and freshly-minted college graduate, wants to give back to her community by working with students. She felt particularly pulled to teaching those with special needs. "I feel like those are the students that are most often neglected," she said. "I feel like it's necessary that they have someone working with them that's passionate about their learning." Read More
  Psychiatric disorders are common in adolescents with single-ventricle congenital heart disease (CHD) who have undergone the Fontan procedure, researchers report. "As opposed to previous studies which have used self-report measures, we uniquely used structured clinical interviews, the gold standard of clinical diagnosis, to determine the presence of psychiatric disorders," explained Dr. David R. DeMaso from Boston Children's Hospital. "In taking this approach, we found both current and lifetime increases in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and anxiety disorders in adolescents facing this critical congenital heart disease. The ADHD diagnosis was expected; however, the anxiety disorder finding was surprising," he told Reuters Health by email. Read More
  Out of Focus: Student Athletes with ADHD are Left Untreated
  MaKenna McGill was never great at paying attention in class, or at least, she never would've listed "focused" as one of her outstanding characteristics. But it wasn't until McGill, now a 20-year-old junior and softball centerfielder at the University of Montana, moved away from her twin brother and small classes to friends and lecture halls in 2014 that she realized the extent of her inattentiveness. On top of her inability to focus and take notes during lectures, McGill couldn't seem to get organized. Her room was a mess, as was her backpack and it was wearing on her ability to plan ahead and study outside of class, simply because she couldn't find her assignments, or worse, didn't know they existed. So when McGill's siblings were diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, a subset of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, in 2015, she took it upon herself to get tested while visiting home in Oklahoma. Sure enough, she tested positive, and was prescribed a low dose of Adderall, an amphetamine-based stimulant used in treating ADHD and narcolepsy. Read More
  * Certified Special Education Teacher - Since 1949, our client has been serving children with multiple and complex disabilities that public and private schools aren't able to accommodate. By providing a safe and nurturing environment and expert staff, children are learning and growing everyday. To learn more -Click here