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An assessment-related stress is an object of interest of both educational and neurobiological research. In educational literature, "feeling stressed" is measured by self-reports and mostly in the situation of high-stakes examinations before and after an exam. In neurophysiological research, "acute stress" is laboratory observed through controlled variables. However, the studies of functionally measured stress in real school context are missing in scientific literature. This article relates the results of a study carried out in a real school context during a class test. Stress data obtained through the functional measurement (heart rate variability) in 16 students and behavioral data in 76 students were analyzed. The results show that class tests under assessment are more stressful compared with nonassessed tests. A decrease in number of correct responses and an increase in response time was observed. Girls show better performance and respond more slowly under assessment. The results are discussed in the scope of interdisciplinary research.

While the brain network supporting handwriting has previously been defined in adults, its organization in children has never been investigated. We compared the handwriting network of 23 adults and 42 children (8- to 11-year-old). Participants were instructed to write the alphabet, the days of the week, and to draw loops while being scanned. The handwriting network previously described in adults (five key regions: left dorsal premotor cortex, superior parietal lobule (SPL), fusiform and inferior frontal gyri, and right cerebellum) was also strongly activated in children. The right precentral gyrus and the right anterior cerebellum were more strongly activated in adults than in children, while the left fusiform gyrus (FuG) was more strongly activated in children than in adults. Finally, we found that, contrary to adults, children recruited prefrontal regions to complete the writing task. This constitutes the first comparative investigation of the neural correlates of writing in children and adults. Our results suggest that the network supporting handwriting is already established in middle childhood. They also highlight the major role of prefrontal regions in learning this complex skill and the importance of right precentral regions and cerebellum in the performance of automated handwriting.

Developmental dyslexia is a long-lasting reading deficit that persists into adulthood. In spite of many difficulties, some adults with dyslexia reach levels of reading comprehension similar to those of unimpaired readers and successfully study at university. While digital technologies offer many potential tools to facilitate reading, there are differences between printed books and e-books, particularly regarding the interaction between the reader and the text (paratextual cues). This study used long-text reading to investigate (1) different aspects of reading comprehension skills (literal and inferential processes, location of events within a story, and reconstruction of the plot) among university students with dyslexia and (2) the impact of e-book reading on reading comprehension in this population. Thirty adults with dyslexia and 30 matched skilled readers read the same text presented from a printed book and an e-book (Amazon Kindle). Questions were open-ended and both questions and answers used oral format. Results showed that with the printed book, dyslexic adults performed similarly to skilled readers in both literal and inferential reading comprehension tasks. Moreover, they performed at the same level or higher than skilled readers in tasks assessing spatiotemporal aspects of reading (localization of events and plot reconstruction). Conversely, with the e-book reader, the dyslexic adults were outperformed by skilled readers both in literal and spatiotemporal comprehension tasks. These results suggest that reading from an e-book hinders some aspects of reading comprehension for adults with dyslexia. However, when reading a printed book without time pressure, university students with dyslexia performed as well as, or better than, non-impaired readers on some measures of reading comprehension. Therefore, digital reading devices might not always be advantageous to them.

Nowadays, computer aided design (CAD) is widely used by designers. Would children learn to draw more easily and more efficiently if they were taught with computerised tools? To answer this question, we made an experiment designed to compare two methods for children to do the same drawing: the classical "pen and paper" method and a CAD method. We asked two groups of 14 children to draw a geometrical figure: the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure (ROCF). The first group drew it with a pen on a sheet of paper("paper" group) and the second on a computer screen with CAD software ("computer" group). Two drawing conditions were studied: "Copying" the figure and drawing from memory. Results showed that the "computer" group was better at copying the figure but that both groups performed equally well when the figure was drawn from memory. These preliminary results suggest that using a CAD tool could help children while they copy a model, but that it does not improve their ability to draw the same figure using their own, internal model.

This paper deals with the kind of manual movement subjects mentally simulate when solving a left-right judgment task that requires rotating images of hands. 50 female students were asked to judge the laterality of drawings of rotated hands presented successively to the right and left visual hemifields by clicking on a mouse using either the right or left hand. Reaction times and accuracy of judgment were recorded. Analysis showed performances varied with the rotation angle at which the stimulus was presented, indicating that the subjects mentally simulated a rotation process. An interaction occurred between the visually presented hand and the responding hand, which suggests that the mental rotation process involved the simulation of a hand movement. Performance improved when the drawing of a hand was presented in the 'palm-up' position, and to the visual hemifield opposite with respect to the hand the subject moved mentally. The latter two findings suggest that the subjects performed a simulated reaching and grasping movement rather than a simulated positioning movement.