There is a need to develop a greater understanding of temperature at the skin-seat interface during prolonged seating from the perspectives of both industrial design (comfort/discomfort) and medical care (skin ulcer formation). Here we test the concept of predicting temperature at the seat surface and skin interface during prolonged sitting (such as required from wheelchair users). As caregiver...

Recent theories suggest that the basis of neurodevelopmental auditory disorders such as dyslexia or specific language impairment might be a low-level sensory dysfunction. In the present study we test this hypothesis in congenital amusia, a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by severe deficits in the processing of pitch-based material. We manipulated the temporal characteristics of audito...

Neurological disorders and physiological aging can lead to a decline of perceptual abilities. In contrast to the conventional therapeutic approach that comprises intensive training and practicing, passive repetitive sensory stimulation (RSS) has recently gained increasing attention as an alternative to countervail the sensory decline by improving perceptual abilities without the need of active ...

A single-subject design was used to assess the effectiveness of therapy ball chairs on classroom participation in 6 boys with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The sensory processing pattern of each participant was assessed using the Sensory Processing Measure. Data on in-seat behavior and engagement were collected using digital video recordings during Circle Time. During baseline, participants s...

This study aimed to investigate any differences between the motor skills and sensory processing abilities of children between the ages of 4 and 8, who do and do not have an idiopathic toe walking gait. Children in each cohort were tested with a number of norm referenced assessments. A total of 60 children participated, 30 within each cohort. Those with an idiopathic toe walking gait were found ...

OBJECTIVE To compare the communication outcomes between children with aided residual hearing and children with cochlear implants. DESIGN Measures of speech recognition and language were administered to pediatric hearing aid users and cochlear implant users followed up longitudinally as part of an ongoing investigation on cochlear implant outcomes. The speech recognition measures included the ...

PURPOSE This is the first study to use the quiet eye (QE) as an objective measure of visuomotor control underpinning proficiency differences in children's motor coordination. METHODS Fifty-seven, year 5 primary school children (9-10 yr old) completed the Movement Assessment Battery for Children, Second Edition (MABC-2), while wearing a gaze registration system. Participants were subsequently ...

Noise correlations (r(noise)) between neurons can affect a neural population's discrimination capacity, even without changes in mean firing rates of neurons. r(noise), the degree to which the response variability of a pair of neurons is correlated, has been shown to change with attention with most reports showing a reduction in r(noise). However, the effect of reducing r(noise) on sensory discr...

Flexible goal-oriented behavior requires the ability to carry information across temporal delays. Neurally, this ability is associated with sustained neural firing. In cognitive terms, this ability has often been associated with the maintenance of sensory material on-line, as during short-termmemory tasks, or with the retention of a motor code, as during movement preparation tasks. The general ...

Flexible goal-oriented behavior requires the ability to carry information across temporal delays. This ability is associated with sustained neural firing. In cognitive terms, this ability has often been associated with the maintenance of sensory material online, as during short-term memory tasks, or with the retention of a motor code, as during movement preparation tasks. The general issue addr...