Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

All Outputs (22)

Introduction of an EdTech intervention to support learning of foundational skills in Sierra Leone: policy, teacher, and community perspectives (2023)
Journal Article
Lurvink, A. F., & Pitchford, N. (2023). Introduction of an EdTech intervention to support learning of foundational skills in Sierra Leone: policy, teacher, and community perspectives. Frontiers in Education, 8, Article 1069857. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2023.1069857

Background: Like many other countries, Sierra Leone faces significant challenges with primary education resulting in many children leaving primary school without acquiring basic foundational skills. To address these challenges, an educational technol... Read More about Introduction of an EdTech intervention to support learning of foundational skills in Sierra Leone: policy, teacher, and community perspectives.

Pedagogical features of interactive apps for effective learning of foundational skills (2023)
Journal Article
Huntington, B., Goulding, J., & Pitchford, N. J. (2023). Pedagogical features of interactive apps for effective learning of foundational skills. British Journal of Educational Technology, 54(5), 1273-1291. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.13317

Interactive apps are commonly used to support the acquisition of foundational skills. Yet little is known about how pedagogical features of such apps affect learning outcomes, attainment and motivation—particularly when deployed in lower‐income conte... Read More about Pedagogical features of interactive apps for effective learning of foundational skills.

Nutrition, growth, and other factors associated with early cognitive and motor development in Sub-Saharan Africa: a scoping review (2020)
Journal Article
Pitchford, N. J., Outhwaite, L. A., French, B., Langley-Evans, S. C., French, B., Outhwaite, L. A., & Pitchford, N. J. (2020). Nutrition, growth, and other factors associated with early cognitive and motor development in Sub-Saharan Africa: a scoping review. Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics, https://doi.org/10.1111/jhn.12795

© 2020 The British Dietetic Association Ltd. Background: Food insecurity, poverty and exposure to infectious disease are well-established drivers of malnutrition in children in Sub-Saharan Africa. Early development of cognitive and motor skills – the... Read More about Nutrition, growth, and other factors associated with early cognitive and motor development in Sub-Saharan Africa: a scoping review.

Neuropsychological outcomes of children with Optic Pathway Glioma (2020)
Journal Article
Papini, C., Dineen, R. A., Walker, D. A., Thomas, S., & Pitchford, N. J. (2020). Neuropsychological outcomes of children with Optic Pathway Glioma. Scientific Reports, 10(1), Article 3344. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-59896-2

Optic Pathway Glioma (OPG) is a relatively common brain tumour in childhood; however, there is scarce understanding of neuropsychological sequelae in these survivors. In this study, 12 children with diagnosis of OPG before 6 years of age received a c... Read More about Neuropsychological outcomes of children with Optic Pathway Glioma.

Secondary Benefits to Attentional Processing Through Intervention with an Interactive Maths App (2019)
Journal Article
Pitchford, N. J., & Outhwaite, L. A. (2019). Secondary Benefits to Attentional Processing Through Intervention with an Interactive Maths App. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02633

Previous research has shown that a specific interactive app, designed to support the development of early mathematical skills and delivered on hand-held tablets, is effective at raising mathematical attainment in young children in low-and high-income... Read More about Secondary Benefits to Attentional Processing Through Intervention with an Interactive Maths App.

A New Methodological Approach for Evaluating the Impact of Educational Intervention Implementation on Learning Outcomes (2019)
Journal Article
Pitchford, N. (2019). A New Methodological Approach for Evaluating the Impact of Educational Intervention Implementation on Learning Outcomes. International Journal of Research and Method in Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/1743727X.2019.1657081

Randomised control trials (RCTs) are commonly regarded as the 'gold standard' for evaluating educational interventions. While this experimental design is valuable in establishing causal relationships between the tested intervention and outcomes, reli... Read More about A New Methodological Approach for Evaluating the Impact of Educational Intervention Implementation on Learning Outcomes.

Interactive apps prevent gender discrepancies in early grade mathematics in a low‐income country in Sub‐Sahara Africa (2019)
Journal Article
Pitchford, N. J., Chigeda, A., & Hubber, P. J. (2019). Interactive apps prevent gender discrepancies in early grade mathematics in a low‐income country in Sub‐Sahara Africa. Developmental Science, 22(5), Article e12864. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12864

Globally, gender differences are reported in the early acquisition of reading and mathematics as girls tend to outperform boys in reading whereas boys tend to outperform girls in mathematics. This can have long‐term impact resulting in an under repre... Read More about Interactive apps prevent gender discrepancies in early grade mathematics in a low‐income country in Sub‐Sahara Africa.

Raising early achievement in math with interactive apps: a randomized control trial (2018)
Journal Article
Outhwaite, L. A., Faulder, M., Gulliford, A., & Pitchford, N. J. (2019). Raising early achievement in math with interactive apps: a randomized control trial. Journal of Educational Psychology, 111(2), 284-298. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000286

Improving provision and raising achievement in early math for young children is of national importance. Child-centered apps offer an opportunity to develop strong foundations in learning math as they deliver one-to-one instruction. Reported here is t... Read More about Raising early achievement in math with interactive apps: a randomized control trial.

Interactive apps promote learning of basic mathematics in children with special educational needs and disabilities (2018)
Journal Article
Pitchford, N. J., Kamchedzera, E., Hubber, P. J., & Chigeda, A. (2018). Interactive apps promote learning of basic mathematics in children with special educational needs and disabilities. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, Article 262. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00262

Interactive apps delivered on touch-screen tablets can be effective at supporting the acquisition of basic skills in mainstream primary school children. This technology may also be beneficial for children with Special Educational Needs and Disabiliti... Read More about Interactive apps promote learning of basic mathematics in children with special educational needs and disabilities.

New insights into the role of motion and form vision in neurodevelopmental disorders (2017)
Journal Article
Johnston, R., Pitchford, N. J., Roach, N. W., & Ledgeway, T. (2017). New insights into the role of motion and form vision in neurodevelopmental disorders. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 83, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2017.09.031

A selective deficit in processing the global (overall) motion, but not form, of spatially extensive objects in the visual scene is frequently associated with several neurodevelopmental disorders, including preterm birth. Existing theories that propos... Read More about New insights into the role of motion and form vision in neurodevelopmental disorders.

Visual perception in dyslexia is limited by sub-optimal scale selection (2017)
Journal Article
Johnston, R., Pitchford, N. J., Roach, N. W., & Ledgeway, T. (in press). Visual perception in dyslexia is limited by sub-optimal scale selection. Scientific Reports, 7, Article 6593. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-06967-6

Readers with dyslexia are purported to have a selective visual impairment but the underlying nature of the deficit remains elusive. Here, we used a combination of behavioural psychophysics and biologically-motivated computational modeling to investig... Read More about Visual perception in dyslexia is limited by sub-optimal scale selection.

Encoding of rapid time-varying information is impaired in poor readers (2017)
Journal Article
Johnston, R., Pitchford, N. J., Roach, N. W., & Ledgeway, T. (2017). Encoding of rapid time-varying information is impaired in poor readers. Journal of Vision, 17(5), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.1167/17.5.1

A characteristic set of eye movements and fixations are made during reading, so the position of words on the retinae is constantly being updated. Effective decoding of print requires this temporal stream of visual information to be segmented or parse... Read More about Encoding of rapid time-varying information is impaired in poor readers.

GreekLex 2: a comprehensive lexical database with part-of-speech, syllabic, phonological, and stress information (2017)
Journal Article
Kyparissiadis, A., van Heuven, W. J., Pitchford, N. J., & Ledgeway, T. (2017). GreekLex 2: a comprehensive lexical database with part-of-speech, syllabic, phonological, and stress information. PLoS ONE, 12(2), Article e0172493. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0172493

Databases containing lexical properties on any given orthography are crucial for psycholinguistic research. In the last ten years, a number of lexical databases have been developed for Greek. However, these lack important part-of-speech information.... Read More about GreekLex 2: a comprehensive lexical database with part-of-speech, syllabic, phonological, and stress information.

Closing the gap: efficacy of a tablet intervention to support the development of early mathematical skills in UK primary school children (2017)
Journal Article
Outhwaite, L. A., Gulliford, A., & Pitchford, N. J. (2017). Closing the gap: efficacy of a tablet intervention to support the development of early mathematical skills in UK primary school children. Computers and Education, 108, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2017.01.011

The efficacy of a hand-held tablet technology intervention with learner-centred interactive software aimed at supporting the development of early maths skills was evaluated in four studies conducted in three UK primary schools. Immediate and sustaine... Read More about Closing the gap: efficacy of a tablet intervention to support the development of early mathematical skills in UK primary school children.

Can Touch Screen Tablets be Used to Assess Cognitive and Motor Skills in Early Years Primary School Children? A Cross-Cultural Study (2016)
Journal Article
Pitchford, N. J., & Outhwaite, L. A. (in press). Can Touch Screen Tablets be Used to Assess Cognitive and Motor Skills in Early Years Primary School Children? A Cross-Cultural Study. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01666

Assessment of cognitive and motor functions is fundamental for developmental and neuropsychological profiling. Assessments are usually conducted on an individual basis, with a trained examiner, using standardized paper and pencil tests, and can take... Read More about Can Touch Screen Tablets be Used to Assess Cognitive and Motor Skills in Early Years Primary School Children? A Cross-Cultural Study.

Why is the processing of global motion impaired in adults with developmental dyslexia? (2016)
Journal Article
Johnston, R., Pitchford, N. J., Roach, N. W., & Ledgeway, T. (2016). Why is the processing of global motion impaired in adults with developmental dyslexia?. Brain and Cognition, 108, 20-31. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2016.07.004

Individuals with dyslexia are purported to have a selective dorsal stream impairment that manifests as a deficit in perceiving visual global motion relative to global form. However, the underlying nature of the visual deficit in readers with dyslexia... Read More about Why is the processing of global motion impaired in adults with developmental dyslexia?.

Fine motor skills predict maths ability better than they predict reading ability in the early primary school years (2016)
Journal Article
Pitchford, N. J., Papini, C., Outhwaite, L. A., & Gulliford, A. (2016). Fine motor skills predict maths ability better than they predict reading ability in the early primary school years. Frontiers in Psychology, 7(MAY), Article 783. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00783

Fine motor skills have long been recognised as an important foundation for development in other domains. However, more precise insights into the role of fine motor skills, and their relationships to other skills in mediating early educational achieve... Read More about Fine motor skills predict maths ability better than they predict reading ability in the early primary school years.

Development of early mathematical skills with a tablet intervention: a randomized control trial in Malawi (2015)
Journal Article
Pitchford, N. J. (in press). Development of early mathematical skills with a tablet intervention: a randomized control trial in Malawi. Frontiers in Psychology, 6(485), https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00485

Evaluation of educational interventions is necessary prior to wide-scale rollout. Yet very few rigorous studies have been conducted on the effectiveness of tablet-based interventions, especially in the early years and in developing countries. This st... Read More about Development of early mathematical skills with a tablet intervention: a randomized control trial in Malawi.

Recommendations for assessing cognitive risks in young children treated for ependymoma for clinical and research protocols: evidence from a systematic literature review (2014)
Journal Article
Morrall, M. C., Pitchford, N. J., Waters, E. C., Ablett, K. L., Stocks, H., Walker, D., & Grundy, R. G. (2014). Recommendations for assessing cognitive risks in young children treated for ependymoma for clinical and research protocols: evidence from a systematic literature review. Journal of Pediatric Oncology Nursing, 2(1), https://doi.org/10.14205/2309-3021.2014.02.01.4

Background: Current treatment approaches for pediatric ependymoma differ between North American and European studies. Post-surgical adjuvant irradiation is used in children aged