| 1. |
- Lindström-Sandahl, Hanna, 1979-
(författare)
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Early Elementary School Interventions in Reading and Mathematics
- 2024
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Supplemental special education support in reading and mathematics is essential for some children who struggle to learn basic reading or mathematics skills in their first years of schooling. Previous research shows that supplemental phonics and early numeracy and arithmetic instruction help students at risk for reading or mathematics difficulties. Few intervention studies have been conducted in the Swedish elementary school context evaluating the effectiveness of early reading and mathematics instruction, limiting evidence-based practices guiding special education in Sweden. This thesis aimed to develop and test the impact of two intensive instructional programs on word reading and reading comprehension skills and number knowledge, arithmetic and problem solving. Transfer-effects of training across the reading and mathematics domains and the long-term impact of the programs were also investigated. The study enrolled 753 first grade students who were screened for low performance (≤25th percentile) in decoding, spelling, number knowledge and arithmetic. To evaluate how the impact of the interventions differ from regular school instruction, students were randomized to intervention and control groups and pre-tested with extended assessment of reading and mathematics skills (n=32 vs. 30 in mathematics, n=34 vs. 34 in reading). Both interventions were implemented at the start of second grade. The intervention programs spanned 36 lessons of supplemental explicit, one-to-one instruction with a special education teacher. Control group students received support planned by their schools. The results were evaluated at post-test and followed-up after 1 year. Both programs indicated significant intervention effects at post-test compared with controls with the reading intervention showing medium impact on decoding and reading comprehension and a strong effect on word recognition. The mathematics intervention program displayed significant moderate impact on number knowledge, arithmetic and basic problem solving. For both interventions, these effects declined at follow-up one year later. In addition, no transfer across reading and mathematics interventions were found. A main conclusion drawn from these randomized controlled studies is that students’ performance in basic reading and mathematics can be substantially accelerated by a time-limited and intense effort, adding to the evidence-base of explicit phonics and early numeracy and arithmetic intervention as recommended practices also in a Swedish school context. As many previous studies have shown, intervention gains tend to fade over time. The longevity of intensive intervention impacts should be considered in post-intervention efforts to support learning. Alignment between supplemental programs and general classroom instruction is suggested.
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| 2. |
- Andreassen, Maria, 1966-
(författare)
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Digital support for people with cognitive impairment : An intervention to increase the occupational performance in everyday life
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Introduction: Senior people with cognitive impairment may experience an inability to manage everyday life due to difficulties related to time management, and planning and structuring everyday life. These difficulties can affect people negatively, for example not remembering to carry out future planned activities. Interventions that compensate for lost cognitive ability often include using assistive technology for cognition (ATC). By investigating the feasibility and potential effects of an intervention with the interactive digital calendar with active reminders, RemindMe, knowledge can be generated about aspects of learning to use and using digital support. Further, knowledge can also be generated about occupations in everyday life that people need to receive reminders for, both during the rehabilitation period and two years after the rehabilitation period. This knowledge can support building evidence-based interventions in rehabilitation for people with cognitive impairment using digital technology. Aim: The overall aim of this thesis was to study an interactive digital calendar with mobile phone reminders (RemindMe) for people with cognitive impairment, as support to increase the occupational performance in everyday life. Methods: This thesis includes four studies, using both qualitative and quantitative data collection methods. Study I was a focus group interview, exploring twenty senior people aged between 66 and 85 and their experiences of learning to use and using RemindMe in everyday life. The seniors had used RemindMe for six weeks and had received weekly support calls from a research assistant during the study period. After six weeks, the participants took part in focus group interviews. Four focus group interviews were conducted, analysed with content analyses. The use of RemindMe and feasibility aspects were also investigated in study II with a mixed-methods design. Eight patients with cognitive impairment, aged between 26–68, and seven occupational therapists participated. The occupational therapists were experienced in occupational therapy and were working at three different outpatient rehabilitation clinics in southeast Sweden. They had a median of 20 years of experience (range of 2–25 years). The patients received an introduction to using RemindMe, as well as weekly support calls from occupational therapists or a research assistant for eight weeks. Quantitative data was collected using the Quebec User Evaluation of Satisfaction with Assistive Technology 2.0 (QUEST 2.0). The frequency of and the actual use of RemindMe was generated by RemindMe. Qualitative data was collected via face-to-face interviews with occupational therapists, via field notes from the weekly support conversations, and during the assessments with patients with cognitive impairment. Analyses were conducted using descriptive statistics and directive deductive content analyses. Study III investigated the intervention with RemindMe, addressing plausible outcome measures by investigating changes in outcomes, impact on occupational performance, independence, health-related quality of life, and the psychosocial impact of support used for people with cognitive impairment. The design was a pilot randomized controlled trial with fifteen patients, with cognitive impairment, aged between 26–79, randomized to either an intervention group or a control group. The intervention group consisted of eight patients and the control group of seven patients. The outcome measures were assessed using the Canadian Occupational Performance Measure (COPM), the Functional Independence Measure (FIM), the EuroQol 5-Dimension Visual Analog Scale (EQ-5D-VAS), and the Psychosocial Impact of Assistive Devices Scale (PIADS). Study III was registered at ClinicalTrails.gov, identifier: NCT04470219. Study IV explored seven patients, aged between 51–71, experiences of strategies and support used to establish a new everyday life and their experience of support for time management and planning and structuring everyday life due to cognitive impairment. The study was a qualitative, semi-structured, face-to-face interview. The interviews were analysed with inductive content analysis. Results: The results of this thesis address learning to use and using assistive technology for cognition (ATC) in everyday life and outcomes from using RemindMe. The participants were accustomed to using calendars. However, there were differences in terms of whether they preferred to use “low tech” calendars (such as paper calendars), or “high tech” calendars (for example, digital calendars with reminders), or whether a combination of “low and high tech” was preferred (Studies I and IV). Other support strategies were also described, for example, the conscious use of objects as reminders in the home environment or everyday life routines (Study IV). Participants were positive towards the use of digital technology, especially mobile phones/smartphones that they easily can carry with them (Studies I and IV). Participants also described the advantage of using digital technology with active reminders and audio prompts, signalling, and telling them when to do something. This was described as the reminder “talks to me” (Study I). The actual use of RemindMe showed that reminders were for example used for taking medication, do exercises, or meeting family or friends (Study II). Occupational therapists in Study II described that their patients benefited from using reminders and that patients have to be active in their everyday life and perceive a need for reminders. The outcomes from measurements of occupational performance (COPM) indicate that patients in the intervention group increased their occupational performance and their satisfaction with their performance compared with the control group. The intervention group also increased their independence (FIM) in the communication and social and intellectual abilities subscales (Study III). Conclusions: The results indicate the importance of choosing a reminder that is suited to the patient’s needs, and this reminder can be either “low tech” or “high tech”. The important thing is that the reminder matches the patient’s needs. The result also indicates that for people with cognitive impairment to make full use of the reminder in everyday life, support with learning to use and using the device for a longer period is needed. Participants (Studies II, III, and IV) described scheduling and receiving active reminders as important for achieving a feeling of comfort and security. Another technique was to find habits and routines or objects to support time management and planning and structuring everyday life. Having a sense of comfort and security involved being in control of everyday life. It can be understood as people talking about being fully involved in their life situations, and in that sense as experiencing participation. However, this was s not investigated in the present studies. Two years after the rehabilitation period, digital or paper calendars were used to establish a new everyday life. Active reminders were trusted and resulted in a feeling of comfort and security as well as a sense of control and independence in everyday life.
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| 3. |
- Blomberg, Rina, 1974-
(författare)
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Auditory Distraction in ADHD : From Behaviour to the Brain
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- ADHD is a heterogenous disorder encompassing neurodevelopmental deficits in cognitive control. Auditory distraction is a common clinically reported symptom in ADHD, yet empirical research investigating the manifestation of auditory distraction in the disorder is remarkably scarce. Findings from cognitive hearing science highlight the crucial role cognitive control plays in an individual’s ability to gate, attenuate and/or compensate for auditory distraction. However the field is yet to extensively test hypotheses in normal hearing populations with neurodevelopmental deficits in cognitive control such as ADHD. This thesis contributes to narrowing the gap within these two fields of research by studying auditory distraction in this clinical population to a greater extent than previous reports in the literature.Using a combination of both behavioural and neuroimaging methods, the research presented here was able to show that adults and adolescents with ADHD are inherently more susceptible to auditory distraction than their non-ADHD counterparts. At the behavioural level, impaired task performance due to auditory distraction was more likely to manifest in ADHD participants when the working memory system was under high processing load. At the neural level, functional aberrancy in auditory attention was evident at early stages of sensory processing in a variety of tasks, implicating both exogenous and endogenous control systems in ADHD. Furthermore, the distribution of ADHD-symptom severity across participants was shown to correlate with increases in both cortical activity to auditory distractors and intrinsic functional connectivity between auditory and exogenous attention networks.In line with evidence from cognitive hearing science, the general findings of this thesis demonstrate that cognitive control plays an important role in the ability to perceive sound under suboptimal listening conditions and hamper distraction. In addition, findings challenge theories of ADHD that question the extent in which sensory-related attentional control is impaired. More empirical research on the auditory modality in ADHD is therefore encouraged in order to revise models, improve diagnostic tools, and develop evidence-based interventions targeting study/work environments.
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| 4. |
- Danielsson, Henrik, Professor, 1974-
(författare)
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Randomiserade kontrollerade studier av interventionsprogram för elever med tidiga läs- och matematiksvårigheter
- 2023
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Ingår i: Resultatdialog 2023. - : Vetenskapsrådet. - 9789189845107 ; , s. 15-18
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Forskningens syfte var att utveckla och utvärdera två interventioner för elever med tidiga lässvårigheter eller tidiga mattesvårigheter. Resultaten visade att bägge interventionerna hade en medelstor till stor effekt på förbättring för interventionsgrupperna direkt efter interventionerna. Ett år efter interventionerna hade de flesta av de positiva effekterna minskat till ungefär hälften.
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| 5. |
- Lindström-Sandahl, Hanna, 1979-, et al.
(författare)
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A randomized controlled study of a second grade numeracy intervention with Swedish students at‐risk of mathematics difficulties
- 2024
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Ingår i: British Journal of Educational Psychology. - : Wiley. - 0007-0998 .- 2044-8279.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: Early numeracy interventions including basicarithmetic are crucial for young students at risk for earlymathematics difficulties (MDs), yet few studies have evalu-ated numeracy interventions in second grade with a rand-omized controlled design.Aim: This pre- and post-test randomized controlled studyevaluated the effects of an intensive 9-week numeracy andarithmetic programme for second-grade students at risk forearly MDs. The focus of the programme was students’ foun-dational understanding of numbers and mathematical con-cepts and procedural fluency with arithmetic tasks.Sample: A total of 753 first-grade students from 21 schoolsin Sweden were screened for low achievement in numberknowledge and arithmetic.Methods: Students considered at risk for MDs (≤25 per-centile on two consecutive first-grade mathematics screen-ings) were individually randomized to an intervention group(n = 32) or control group (n = 30) at the beginning of secondgrade (7–8 years old). Trained teachers administered theone-to-one, explicit programme to intervention group stu-dents in elementary school settings. The intervention groupreceived numeracy instruction emphasizing foundationalmathematics concepts and procedures. Controls receivedteaching as usual with potential special education supportprovided by their schools.Results: The intervention group demonstrated significantlygreater improvements in conceptual knowledge, arithmeticcalculations and problem-solving compared to the controlgroup, with medium size effects observed.
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| 6. |
- Nilsson, Karin, 1987-
(författare)
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Words Don’t Come Easy : Decoding and Reading Comprehension Difficulties in Adolescents with Intellectual Disability
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Individuals with intellectual disability (ID) have difficulties with decoding and reading comprehension. However, studies focussing on why these difficulties occur are very sparse, and the existing literature has found conflicting results. This thesis investigated the development of reading abilities and the concurrent cognitive, linguistic, and environmental predictors of decoding and reading comprehension in Swedish adolescents with ID of unknown aetiology. In addition, this thesis evaluated the applicability of one of the most commonly used theoretical frameworks of reading comprehension: the Simple View of Reading (SVR). The results showed that the development of reading abilities in adolescents with ID is in line with the model of developmental delay. This means that the development of reading abilities is not qualitatively different from typical reading development, but the rate is slower. Further, it means that the pattern of concurrent predictors is similar to the pattern found in a younger typically developing population. In Swedish adolescents with ID decoding is predicted by phonological awareness and rapid automatized naming (RAN), and reading comprehension is predicted by decoding, vocabulary, and phonological executive-loaded working memory (ELWM). This thesis also found that the developmental trajectory of decoding plateaus at a mental age of 8:9 years, while it is expected in typically developing children that decoding ability continues to increase until early adolescence. The explanation for this early plateau could be either cognitive or educational, but most likely a combination of both. Lastly, the results from this thesis also suggest that the SVR is not sufficient for explaining reading comprehension in adolescents with ID. Instead, a combination of the SVR and the Lexical Quality Hypothesis (LQH) is suggested as a successful way of explaining the variance in reading comprehension. Taken together, the results from this thesis implies that reading instruction and interventions originally developed for typically developing children is likely to be effective for individuals with ID.
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| 7. |
- Palmqvist, Lisa, 1987-
(författare)
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Time to Plan : How to support everyday planning in adolescents with intellectual disability
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Children and adolescents with intellectual disability (ID) have difficulties in executive functioning and when coping with everyday planning tasks. However, the literature cannot explain whether individuals with ID perform according to their developmental level or not. The studies in this thesis investigated if life experience could be a contributing factor to the diversity seen in the literature. Planning performance can be improved by either using external or internal support. Assistive technology for cognition (ATC) is an example of external support. This thesis investigated how the ATC is being used in an everyday planning situation which has not been investigated before. Furthermore, this thesis explored whether the internal supports of cognitive abilities and life experience correlate with planning ability in adolescents with ID, and if planning ability can be trained using a cognitive training program for everyday planning. Results showed that ATC supported cognitive functions, but that the children did not formulate the plans themselves. Furthermore, the results support the difference model of ID since planning correlated with different cognitive measures and life experience in adolescents with ID compared to children with a typical development. Adolescents with ID got better at the planning tasks in the training program, however, no transfer effects to untrained planning tasks were found. To conclude, the planning was supported by external and internal support. However, ATC needs to be designed and prescribed in a way that increases independence. Practitioners should actively support in training planning and should be cautious when introducing cognitive interventions if the transfer gap is too large.
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| 8. |
- Arvola, Mattias, 1975-, et al.
(författare)
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Autonomous Vehicles for Children with Mild Intellectual Disability : Perplexity, Curiosity, Surprise, and Confusion
- 2023
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Ingår i: Proceedings of the European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics 2023. - New York, NY, USA : Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). - 9798400708756 ; , s. 1-8
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Self-driving buses will be part of the public transportation system of the future, and they must therefore be accessible to all. The study reported in this paper examines the user experiences of 16 children with mild intellectual disability riding a self-driving bus. The qualitative analysis, performed by iterative affinity diagramming, of interviews, observations, and a co-design session with five of the children, suggests that familiar situations were characterized by contemplation and curiosity, while unfamiliar ones were characterized by surprise or confusion. The temporal structure of past, present, and future situations in the field of attention played a significant role in the children’s experiences. This leads to design considerations for an explainable interior of self-driving buses.
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| 9. |
- Elbe, Pia
(författare)
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Exploring the Hidden Dimensions of Distraction in Adults with Atypical Attention
- 2023
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Inattention and proclivity for distraction are symptoms of adult ADHD that hamper productivity in study and work environments. The topic of this dissertation is mechanisms of distraction and facilitation of attention in ADHD. This thesis includes three studies. The following overarching questions are addressed in each study respectively: (1) Is computerized cognitive training (CCT) an intervention which improves overall cognitive outcomes in adults with ADHD, (2) Are there differences depending on ADHD symptom severity and distraction in auditory or vibro-tactile sensory modalities, and (3) Is background white noise a shield from distraction for those with ADHD during a short-term memory task?Study I is a systematic review and meta-analysis of CCT interventions for adults with ADHD, following a pre- post-test design for randomized controlled trials. Nine intervention studies are included in the systematic review, with the resulting meta-analysis for overall cognitive outcomes showing a very small benefit of the CCT intervention. Study I also included sub-analyses of three outcome categories according to the Cattell-Horn-Carol framework of cognition: cognitive speed, executive functions, and short-term memory. None of these individual meta-analyses resulted in significant improvements. Participants took part in a cross-modal visual oddball task with auditory and vibro-tactile distractors in Study II. Forty-five participants were divided into two groups for the analysis: one group with low ADHD symptoms and one group with high ADHD symptoms. Findings did not show a relationship between ADHD symptom status and distraction in either auditory or vibro-tactile modality, despite both groups showing the expected slowed reactions on deviant trials. A sensitivity analysis showed that the high symptom group exhibited 0.5 % more missed trials compared to the low symptom group, possibly due to mind wandering in this non-forced-choice task.For Study III, serial recall data was collected from sixty-six individuals with ADHD and sixty-six healthy control participants, who were tested with white background noise and no background noise conditions. The results showed that participants with ADHD were more likely to get distracted by auditory omission deviants in continuous background white noise, whereas healthy controls were more likely to get distracted by auditory addition deviants in the condition without background noise. Also, the individuals with ADHD on average did not exhibit a typical primacy effect across serial recall items. Overall, the results of the three studies in this dissertation point to some areas for improvement for adults with ADHD where targeted behavioral interventions might be useful in the future.
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| 10. |
- Forsblad, Mattias, 1985-, et al.
(författare)
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How Children with Mild Intellectual Disability Experience Self-driving Buses : In Support of Agency
- 2023
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Ingår i: Transaction on Transport Sciences. - : Palacky University Olomouc. - 1802-971X .- 1802-9876. ; 14:2, s. 21-31
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Many people with intellectual disability experience their needs and desires not being fully considered. Responding to this problem, the purpose of this study is to investigate how children with mild intellectual disability experience self-driving buses. On each bus, a person called "safety driver" monitors the ride and takes control if a problematic situation arises. The purpose is also to investigate what roles support persons and safety drivers play. In addition, the research aims to propose improvements in how the design of these self-driving buses can better motivate children with intellectual disability to use them in support of their agency. To address this, we arranged and studied seven rides on self-driving buses, for 16 children diagnosed to have mild intellectual disability, and their support persons. Interviews with the children were held after the rides, and both the rides and interviews were video recorded.The analysis was in part inductive but also employed a theory based on motivation: self-determination theory. For several children, the bus worked as a vehicle for a social sightseeing tour of the local environment, and the current design did not hinder such an experience. Overall, many of the children had a positive experience, but there is room for improvement regarding the design of the buses. Some children expressed curiosity and a few frustrations with how the bus behaved in traffic. For instance, it was difficult for the children to understand why the bus braked for things that were hard for them to perceive. From observation, it appears that the accompanying support person and safety driver played an important role in making children safe and shaping the social environment on the bus. The support persons were also essential for some children to ride the bus at all. The safety driver provided the children with information about how the bus worked. Both the safety driver and the support person had a positive impact on the children's experience.
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