The present study focuses on the similarities and differences in language production between children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In addition, we investigated whether Theory of Mind (ToM), working memory, and response inhibition are associated with language production. Narratives, produced by 106 Dutch-speaking children (36 with ASD, 34 with ADHD, and 36 typically developing) aged 6 to 12 during ADOS assessment, were examined on several linguistic measures: verbal productivity, speech fluency, syntactic complexity, lexical semantics, and discourse pragmatics. Children were tested on ToM, working memory, and response inhibition and parents filled in the Children's Communication Checklist (CCC-2). Gold-standard diagnostic measures (Autism Diagnostic Observation Schema [ADOS], Autism Diagnostic Interview Revised [ADI-R], and the Parent Interview for Child Symptoms [PICS]) were administered to all children to confirm diagnosis. Regarding similarities, both clinical groups showed impairments in narrative performance relative to typically developing children. These were confirmed by the CCC-2. These impairments were not only present on pragmatic measures, such as the inability to produce a narrative in a coherent and cohesive way, but also on syntactic complexity and their production of repetitions. As for differences, children with ADHD but not children with ASD showed problems in their choice of referring expressions and speech fluency. ToM and working memory performance but not response inhibition were associated with many narrative skills, suggesting that these cognitive mechanisms explain some of the impairments in language production. We conclude that children with ASD and children with ADHD manifest multiple and diverse language production problems, which may partly relate to their problems in ToM and working memory. (PsycINFO Database Record

In this meta‐analysis, the authors synthesize results from 44 (quasi‐)experimental studies on informational and narrative text structure interventions involving students in grades 4–6 in regular school settings. Findings show that text structure instruction had positive immediate effects on students’ reading comprehension but that effect sizes varied largely across outcome measures: questions (Hedges’ g = 0.25), summarization (g = 0.57), recall (g = 0.37), and knowledge about text structure (g = 0.38). However, students who received text structure instruction no longer outperformed control groups at delayed posttests. Content‐related features, such as a focus on paragraph‐level structure, active construction of graphic organizers, and teaching rule‐based summarization techniques, moderated the effectiveness of text structure instruction, but these effects also varied across outcome measures. Instructional features moderated delayed effects: Interventions with opportunities for individual student practice resulted in higher delayed effects for comprehension questions. The authors argue that text structure instruction deserves a place in the primary school curriculum so the positive effects on reading will be maintained.

In the Netherlands, the quality of the reading curriculum is currently under debate because of disappointing results on national and international assessments of students’ reading skills and motivation. In a mixed-method study, we analyzed the content of Dutch textbooks for reading comprehension instruction (i.e., the implemented curriculum) and teachers’ evaluation and use of these books (i.e., the enacted curriculum). A materials analysis of reading comprehension lessons (N = 80) in eight textbooks for grades 4 and 5 was complemented with semi-structured teacher interviews (N = 29) and lesson observations (N = 11), with a focus on the quality of reading strategy and text structure instruction in the curriculum. Main findings are (1) a lack of alignment between lesson goals, theory, and assignments, (2) a strong focus on practicing strategies, (3) limited declarative knowledge about strategies and text structure, (4) little opportunities for self-regulated strategy application. The teachers that were interviewed mention similar problems, but still hardly deviate from the textbook’s content and pedagogical guidelines. We make recommendations to improve the quality of the curriculum.

It has been argued (e.g., by De Villiers and colleagues) that the acquisition of sentence embedding is necessary for the development of first-order Theory of Mind (ToM): the ability to attribute beliefs to others. This raises the question whether the acquisition of double embedded sentences is related to, and perhaps even necessary for, the development of second-order ToM: the ability to attribute beliefs about beliefs to others. This study tested 55 children (aged 7-10) on their ToM understanding in a false-belief task and on their elicited production of sentence embeddings. We found that second-order ToM passers produced mainly double embeddings, whereas first-order ToM passers produced mainly single embeddings. Furthermore, a better performance on second-order ToM predicted a higher rate of double embeddings and a lower rate of single embeddings in the production task. We conclude that children’s ability to produce double embeddings is related to their development of second-order ToM.

Many primary school students in the Netherlands struggle with reading comprehension, especially when it comes to higher-order comprehension skills, such as summarizing. Scientific literature has suggested various ways to foster text comprehension, for example by providing explicit instruction about text structures (e.g., cause-effect, chronology), as this might foster the construction of a solid mental representation of the text: a coherent situation model (e.g., see Meyer & Ray, 2011). A text structure is the underlying skeleton of a text that organizes all the information. Text structure can be defined as the organization of ideas, the relationship among the ideas and the vocabulary used to convey meaning to the reader” (Pyle et al., 2017:1; see also Armbruster, 2004). What if we would teach children in primary school about text structures? Our meta-analysis showed that explicit instruction about narrative and informative text structures yields positive immediate effects on students' reading comprehension, and that effects vary across outcome measures: recall tasks (g = 0.37), summarization (g = 0.57), reading comprehension tests (g = 0.25), and text structure knowledge tests (g = 0.38) for students in the upper elementary grades. The moderator analysis revealed that content-related features such as a focus on paragraph-level structure, active construction of graphic organizers, and rule-based summarization techniques moderated the effectiveness, but these effects also varied with outcome measure. The mixed-methods study examined the state-of-affairs analysis of the current Dutch primary school reading curriculum for grades 4 and 5. The data are based on a materials analysis of reading comprehension lessons (n = 80) in eight textbooks for grades 4 and 5, supplemented with semi-structured teacher interviews (n = 29) and lesson observations (n = 11). Main findings were (1) a lack of alignment between lesson goals, theory, and assignments, (2) a strong focus on practicing strategies, (3) limited declarative knowledge about strategies and text structure, (4) little opportunities for selfregulated strategy application, and (5) strong emphasis on individual question answering. Therefore, a lesson series on text structure was developed in a design-based research in close collaboration with four teachers. Based on data from lesson artefacts, logbooks, panel interviews, and lesson observations, this study revealed several difficulties related to the design principles and their implementation in practice, and identified several areas in which teachers' pedagogical content knowledge about reading comprehension could be strenghthened. This lesson series was then tested for its effectiveness among 201 students in a switching-panels replication design with three measurement occasions. There were positive effects on writing skills for all students, but the effects on reading, summarizing, and metacognitive knowledge varied between intervention groups. This variability in effects raised questions about the exact lesson implementation. In the final study, we closely monitored three teachers and their students in another implementation of the intervention. Implementation fidelity scores varied across teachers and lesson phases, with the lowest scores for collaborative learning (51%) and the highest for explicit instruction (91%).This study generated useful insights for the professionalization of teachers and reinforcement of teaching materials for reading comprehension instruction.