The construct of motivation has been revealed to be significant in elementary students’ academic achievement. Furthermore, evidence shows that intrinsically motivated students perform better on academic tasks than extrinsically motivated students. Challenge preference, which is suggested to be a component of intrinsic motivation, is also predictive of students’ academic achievement. The purpose of the current study is to determine if there is a relation between different aspects of self-reported intrinsic motivation and a students’ preference for challenge on a puzzle task. A sample of 92 second-grade students completed 2-hour laboratory sessions. Harter’s Motivation Scale was used to assess children’s self-report of intrinsic motivation across three subscales: challenge, curiosity, and independent mastery. A puzzle task was used to assess children’s challenge preference, with higher scores indicating that children chose more challenging puzzles to complete. Bivariate correlations were used to analyze associations between children’s self-reported intrinsic motivation and the difficulty of the puzzles they chose. There was a significant correlation between children’s intrinsic motivation for challenges and the difficulty of puzzles they completed (r = .23, p = .04). However, children’s curiosity and independent mastery were not significantly associated with the difficulty of puzzles they chose. Further, none of the intrinsic motivation subscales were significantly associated with the proportion of puzzles the children completed. Children who believe that they prefer challenges actually pursue more challenging options when given the choice. Their challenge preference is not associated with their desire to learn new things or figure problems out on their own.

Current research has failed to evaluate gist memory in developmental disabilities, like autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and Down syndrome (DS), groups with specific memory deficits. Memory evaluation within the criminal justice system has increased, focusing on eyewitness testimonies and false memory. False memory stems from the fuzzy trace theory or dual-process theory, where the two types of memory processes, verbatim and gist, utilize different retrieval processes. Gist processes rely on semantic features, while verbatim processes rely on surface details. During sleep, memories are consolidated into long-term storage. People with ASD and DS have specific sleep deficits that have been shown to impact memory. Autistic children have reduced sleep latency, while children with DS spend less time in rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, likely decreasing hippocampal activation, reducing memory consolidation (Luongo et al., 2021). To investigate the gist memory in neurodevelopmental disorders, specifically ASD and DS, a developmentally appropriate novel picture-based assessment for a gist memory task was used. In this computerized task, participants will complete a short and long-term delay task, separated by either a period of sleep or wake. Actigraphy watches assess sleep quality which are compared to the gist memory performance taken at each condition. Eye-tracking is utilized to assess attention to stimuli and encoding processes during the gist memory task. This study will be the first to investigate sleep-dependent gist memory in children with neurodevelopmental disorders. It is hypothesized that children with neurodevelopmental disorders will rely more on gist memory than explicit memory, presumably influenced by sleep.

Bilingualism is a growing phenomena among neurotypical and neurodiverse children alike. However, literature on children with disabilities, such as Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), has largely focused on how early bilingual instruction may cause further language delays in populations with already impaired communication. Recent studies are beginning to highlight a potential benefit in the preverbal communication, expressive vocabulary, and executive functions of bilingual children. However, 90% of developmental psychology research is conducted on white, U.S., middle class families (the W.E.I.R.D. population). Consequently, families from differing cultural and environmental contexts may be overlooked in these studies. This study employs qualitative methods to bridge the gap in the literature concerning families of Hispanic descent and to explore and qualify the parenting practices that these families use to support their Autistic child’s cognitive and linguistic development. At least five Spanish speaking families with at least one child on the spectrum, who is between the ages of five and twelve, will be interviewed. Ultimately, a qualitative approach allows us to capture the language practices that are most beneficial to the current linguistic routines of bilingual, immigrant, Latinx families.