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Technological developments in various fields are the key to progress in the digital era. The utilization of technology-based learning media in education makes learning more interactive and supports independent learning. This study aims to develop and test the practicality and effectiveness of storyline-based nervous system e-comics media to support students' independent learning. This research uses the Research and Development (RnD) method with the Lee & Owen model, consisting of the analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation stages. The research was conducted with the subjects in this study, class XI MIPA SMA Negeri 2 Malang students, totalling 60 people. A pre-experimental design of one group pretest-posttest was used to test the effectiveness of the media. Data were collected through questionnaires and tests. The media validation results obtained 100%, material validation 100%, and student response results 98.7% in the class trial. The effectiveness test used a Pretest-Posttest Control Group Design. The results showed a significant difference between the posttest of both classes with Sig. (2-tailed) 0.00 <0.05, there is a significant difference between the control and experimental classes. Storylinebased nerve e-comic media can facilitate independent learning more interestingly and interactively.

Given the absence of expertise criteria of academics or lecturers, we sought to explore relevant studies to formulate an informed framework of academic expertise. Academics at higher education institutions are often considered experts. Usually, academic roles comprise teaching, research, and community service. Therefore, academics' expertise should be assessed based on these roles. However, no specific criteria are currently available to address this issue. At the moment, various attempts have been directed to measure academic competence. However, it should be understood that competence and expertise require different levels of mastery of knowledge and skill acquisition. Because many scholars have argued that competence is insufficient to handle present and future challenges, developing an assessment tool for academic expertise is imperative. We aim to develop standards for identifying and determining academic expertise as a novel attempt to develop that tool. To do so, we examined the well-defined expertise theory of General Expertise Measurement (GEM) and refined it specifically for academics. A systematic review of the existing literature was conducted to identify the criteria aligning with the academic expertise. These criteria were then validated by experts to determine their significance and relevance in assessing the academic expertise. The findings revealed that several criteria emerged as highly significant and relevant for assessing academic expertise. These criteria include knowledge, experience, problem-solving abilities, skill analysis, collaboration, communication, engagement with the community, educational background, continuous improvement, intuition, recognition, research aptitude, training, understanding of the context, and self-confidence.

Insomnia is one of the most common co-occurring disorders in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The purpose of this cross-sectional cohort study of 270 children with ASD was to assess the prevalence of insomnia using the Pediatric Sleep Clinical Global Impression Scale and to correlate sleep problems with cognitive level, adaptive behavior, parental stress, behavioral and emotional problems, and severity of core symptoms. Our findings revealed that one-third of children had insomnia and were related to reduced adaptive behaviors and higher levels of parental stress and behavioral and emotional problems. Insomnia must be evaluated in children with ASD to define an appropriate intervention to potentially alleviate the severity of clinical correlates and parental burden.

Problem-solving skills are advantageous when resolving complicated and multidimensional challenges. Problem-solving skills can be developed through active learning models that engage students in the learning process. One active learning model is RICOSRE. The main focus of RICOSRE is problem-solving activities in (1) reading; (2) identifying the problem; (3) constructing the solution; (4) solving the problem; (5) reviewing the solution; and (6) extending the solution. The purpose of this study was to assess the ongoing development of problem-solving skills of students with upper, middle, and lower academic abilities at the Department of Biology Education in a state university in Indonesia. This study employed a concurrent embedded mixed-methods design. The repeated-measures ANOVA was used to test the hypothesis for the quantitative data, and NVivo 12 was utilized to analyze the qualitative data. The participants' problem-solving skills were determined by their responses to items on RICOSRE-integrated worksheets. The students' responses were graded using a validated and reliable problem-solving rubric. The findings indicated that the students' problem-solving skills improved consistently in the upper, middle, and lower academic groups that were taught by implementing RICOSRE.

This study used the verbal protocol method to examine differences in perceptions of spatial mental imagery between students and studio lecturers and between clients and designers/architects, which lead to interpretational bias between groups of respondents regarding interior spaces. Individual perceptions of virtual space dimensions were captured by the 3D application, Associative Words Generator© (AWG©), which revealed impressions of the four respondent groups, using associative concept networks analysis on the visualization of virtual space with a database of 16,200 associative words. This study determined AWG© reduced the visual discrepancy gap during design critic and design consultation. Comparison of the results of the associative words generated during non-VR mental imagery and the VR session (AWG©) indicated that the student group most effectively used the VR. The lecturer group exhibited a thorough understanding of interior design and space architecture in their response in non-VR and VR sessions, which created a mental spatial imagery gap between the students and lecturers. The client group was inexperienced in interior design and architecture, resulting in different outcomes than the designer/architect group. In the VR session, the student and client groups more easily accepted visualizations generated by AWG, because they had fewer experiences and references than the lecturers and designers/architects, and thus, accepted the AWG virtual space visualization stimuli. The lecturer and designer/architect groups shared experiences that affected their expectations in responding to the generated visualizations, resulting in difficulty to accept the AWG virtual space visualization stimuli.

A thesis abstract is an essential part of a thesis since it represents the content of the thesis. In Indonesia, where the abstracts need to be translated into English, a number of translation errors may occur. This study aims at analysing the translation errors in the thesis abstracts and classify the errors into major and minor errors. The data were collected from the undergraduate theses of the Communication Science Department students, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Universitas Airlangga. The results show a total of 128 errors, where 79 of them (61.7%) are major errors. In the major error types, the most frequent error type is the Experientially Inaccurate translation (21.1%), followed by the Logically Inaccurate translation (11.7%), and the Interpersonally Inadequate translation (11.7%). Meanwhile, the minor errors only comprise 38.3% (49 errors) of the total errors. The errors include the Minor Grammatical errors (36.7%) and Spelling errors (1.6%). Considering these numbers of errors, it is necessary to pay more attention to the translation of the thesis abstracts because they reflect the content of the theses.

Since the introduction of the General Service List (GSL) in 1953, a number of studies have confirmed the significant role of a word list, particularly GSL, in helping ESL students learn English. Given the recent development in technology, several researchers have created word lists, each of them claims to provide a better coverage of a text and a significant role in helping students learn English. This article aims at analyzing the claims made by the existing word lists and proposing a method for selecting words and a creating a word list. The result of this study shows that there are differences in the coverage of the word lists due to the difference in the corpora and the source text analysed. This article also suggests that we should create our own word list, which is both personalized and comprehensive. This means that the word list is not just a list of words. The word list needs to be accompanied with the senses and the patterns of the words, in order to really help ESL students learn English.

Emerging evidence suggests that the combination of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and reading training may provide promising benefits for dyslexia; however, the clinical effects and the role of individual differences in tDCS outcomes for dyslexia remain unclear. To this end, the present study investigated the effects of tDCS on clinically relevant reading measures and examined factors (i.e. reading at baseline, age, and intelligence quotient [IQ]) that may contribute to improvements following tDCS treatment. Our results showed that, in terms of word reading fluency, the percentage of responders in the active tDCS group was higher than that in the sham tDCS group. Linear mixed effects models showed that the effect of tDCS and reading training tasks on word reading fluency depended on reading at baseline with age and IQ. Thus, the present study provides research-based selection criteria for potential responders to tDCS and encourages tailored intervention based on individual characteristics.

Language constructs how humans perceive things. Since language is a human construction, it tends to be biased as it is mainly men's construction. Using gender perspectives, this paper attempts to discuss the imbalance in gender representations found in the examples given in an English learner's dictionary, that is, the "Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary, 3rd Edition". A learner's dictionary is chosen because it is where one can find and learn the meaning of words. The results show that linguistically speaking, English is still a highly patriarchal and gendering language where men are portrayed better than women. Women tend to be subjugated under men's domination. Sexism and patriarchy still overshadow the meanings of words characterizing men and women. This means that men are still considered to be dominating women, despite the fact that the feminist movement has been going more than thirty years. Consequently, English language teachers should balance the gender bias by providing additional materials that are gender neutral.

This paper charts the construction of a technical vocabulary list called the Islamic Religious Studies Textbooks Vocabulary (IRSTV) which was developed from the Corpus of Islamic religious studies textbooks (CIRST) in an Indonesian Islamic State Institute (IISI). The study is aimed to meet the need of first-year English language learners studying in Indonesian Islamic tertiary education. The IRSTV list contains selected word types extracted from five major sub-disciplines of Islamic Religious Studies (IRS), i.e. the science of Qur'an, the science of Hadiths, Islamic law and jurisprudence, Islamic philosophy and theology, and Islamic mysticism theology, taught in most Indonesian Islamic universities and colleges. The quantitative analysis of frequency, range and keyness score ranking was conducted and aided by Corpus analysis software i.e. Antwordprof and Antconc keyword tool. A final triangulated ranking of these three criteria was conducted to produce a more balanced technical vocabulary list resulting in 262 word types or 239 lemmas of English words that are needed to be learned by English as Foreign Language (EFL) students of Indonesian Islamic universities, state institutes and colleges.

New skills may be learned by active experience (experiential learning or learning by doing) or by observation of others' experience (learning by observation). In general, learning by observation reduces the time and the attempts needed to learn complex actions and behaviors. The present research aimed to compare learning by observation and learning by doing in two clinical populations with different etiology of intellectual disability (ID), as individuals with Down syndrome (DS) and individuals with Williams syndrome (WS), with the hypothesis that specific profiles of learning may be found in each syndrome. To this end, we used a mixture of new and existing data to compare the performances of 24 individuals with DS, 24 individuals with WS and 24 typically developing children on computerized tasks of learning by observation or learning by doing. The main result was that the two groups with ID exhibited distinct patterns of learning by observation. Thus, individuals with DS were impaired in reproducing the previously observed visuo-motor sequence, while they were as efficient as TD children in the experiential learning task. On the other hand, individuals with WS benefited from the observational training while they were severely impaired in detecting the visuo-motor sequence in the experiential learning task (when presented first). The present findings reinforce the syndrome-specific hypothesis and the view of ID as a variety of conditions in which some cognitive functions are more disrupted than others because of the differences in genetic profile and brain morphology and functionality. These findings have important implications for clinicians, who should take into account the genetic etiology of ID in developing learning programs for treatment and education.

Copy-number variants (CNVs) are associated with susceptibility to autism spectrum disorder (ASD). To detect the presence of CNVs, we conducted an array-comparative genomic hybridization (array-CGH) analysis in 133 children with "essential" ASD phenotype. Genetic analyses documented that 12 children had causative CNVs (C-CNVs), 29 children had non-causative CNVs (NC-CNVs) and 92 children without CNVs (W-CNVs). Results on clinical evaluation showed no differences in cognitive abilities among the three groups, and a higher number of ASD symptoms and of non-verbal children in the C-CNVs group compared to the W-CNVs and NC-CNVs groups. Our results highlighted the importance of the array-CGH analyses and showed that the presence of specific CNVs may differentiate clinical outputs in children with ASD.

Executive functions are a set of high cognitive abilities that control and regulate other functions and behaviors and are crucial for successful adaptation. Deficits in executive functions are frequently described in developmental disorders, which are characterized by disadaptive behavior. However, executive functions are not widely examined in individuals with intellectual disability. The present study is aimed at evaluating the etiological specificity hypotheses pertaining to executive functions by comparing individuals with intellectual disability of different etiology, as Williams syndrome and Down syndrome, on different aspects of executive functions. To this aim a battery evaluating attention, short-term and working memory, planning, categorization, shifting and inhibition, was administered to 15 children, adolescents and adults with Williams syndrome, to 15 children, adolescents and adults with Down syndrome and to 16 mental-age-matched typically developing children. The two groups with intellectual disability showed impairment in a set of executive functions, as auditory sustained attention, visual selective attention, visual categorization and working memory, and preserved visual sustained attention, auditory selective attention and visual inhibition. However, a distinctive profile has been found between the two syndromic groups on other executive functions. While participants with Down syndrome were poor in shifting and verbal aspects of memory and inhibition, those with Williams syndrome were poor in planning. The specific weakness and straights on executive functions may support the etiological specificity hypothesis accounting for distinctive cognitive development syndrome-specific. (Contains 2 tables.)

Increasing evidence in the literature supports the usefulness of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) in studying reading processes. Two brain regions are primarily involved in phonological decoding: the left superior temporal gyrus (STG), which is associated with the auditory representation of spoken words, and the left inferior parietal lobe (IPL), which operates in phonological computation. This study aimed to clarify the specific contribution of IPL and STG to reading aloud and to evaluate the possibility of modulating healthy participants' task performance using high frequency repetitive TMS (hf-rTMS). The main finding is that hf-rTMS over the left IPL improves non-word reading accuracy (fewer errors), whereas hf-rTMS over the right STG selectively decreases text-reading accuracy (more errors). These results confirm the prevalent role of the left IPL in grapheme-to-phoneme conversion. The non-word reading improvement after Left-IPL stimulation provide a direct link between left IPL activation and advantages in sublexical procedures, mainly involved in non-word reading. Results indicate also the specific involvement of STG in reading morphologically complex words and in processing the representation of the text. The text reading impairment after stimulation of the right STG can be interpreted in light of an inhibitory influence on the homologous area. In sum, data document that hf-rTMS is effective in modulating the reading accuracy of expert readers and that the modulation is task related and site specific. These findings suggest new perspectives for the treatment of reading disorders. (Contains 1 figure and 1 table.)

Knowledge of technical vocabulary has become increasingly important over the last few decades along with the advances in various subject disciplines. ESP teachers and book authors need to know what words are considered technical vocabulary when creating ESP learning materials. LSP lexicographers need to know how to determine technical vocabulary when deciding the entries for LSP dictionaries. This paper examines four methods which have been used for determining technical vocabulary. These four methods are called vocabulary classifications, keyword analysis, term extraction, and systematic classifications. A financial text taken from the Chartered Financial Analyst book is used to analyze the merits and demerits of each method. Realizing the problems with those four methods, this paper rounds up with a proposal called a hybrid method for determining technical vocabulary. This hybrid method does not only present a better way to determine technical vocabulary but also expand the concept of words in order to obtain a more comprehensive coverage of the items that constitute technical vocabulary. (Contains 5 tables.)

Numerous studies have shown that imitating observed actions belongs to the same category of processes involved in planning and executing actions. New competencies may be acquired by actually executing a task or by executing a task after having seen how to do it. The performance of thirty dyslexic children was compared with that of an age- and gender-matched group of thirty normally reading children on tasks of learning a visuo-motor sequence by observation or by trial and error. The children observed an actor detecting a visuo-motor sequence and then performed the task reproducing either the previously observed sequence or a new one (Learning by Observation), or detected a sequence by trial and error (Learning by Doing), or first performed the task by trial and error and then performed it after an observational training (Learning by Observation after Doing). Results demonstrate that the dyslexic children were severely impaired in learning a sequence by observation, were able to detect a sequence by trial and error, and became as efficient as normal readers in reproducing an observed sequence after a task of learning by doing. Thus, the impaired ability to learn by observation could be reversed by agentive experience that supplied dyslexic children with a powerful learning mechanism, which enabled them to efficiently transfer action information across modalities. The beneficial effect of practice on the ability to learn by observation could provide dyslexic children a useful chance to acquire new cognitive abilities through more tuned teaching approach. (Contains 4 figures.)

The reduced verbal long-term memory capacities often reported in dyslexics are generally interpreted as a consequence of their deficit in phonological coding. The present study was aimed at evaluating whether the learning deficit exhibited by dyslexics was restricted only to the verbal component of the long-term memory abilities or also involved visual-object and visual-spatial domain. A further goal of the present study was to investigate the predictive value of non-verbal long-term memory abilities with respect to word and non-word reading in dyslexic children. In accordance with these aims, performances of 60 dyslexic children were compared with that of 65 age-matched normal readers on verbal, visual-spatial and visual-object task. Results documented a generalized impairment of episodic long-term memory capacities in dyslexic children and the results did not vary as a function of children's age. Furthermore, in addition to verbal measures, also individual differences in non-verbal long-term memory tasks turn out to be good predictors of reading difficulties in dyslexics. Our findings indicate that the long-term memory deficit in dyslexia is not limited to the dysfunction of phonological components but also involves visual-object and visual-spatial aspect, thus suggesting that dyslexia is associated to multiple cognitive deficits. (Contains 1 table and 1 figure.)