The present article deals with introducing and critically studying the book Descartes Embodied: Reading Cartesian Philosophy through Cartesian Science by Daniel Garber. Garber, one of the most prominent researchers of modern philosophy and contemporary Descartes-scholar, wrote the book in 1980, and it was published by Cambridge University Press. This work has been released in French, yet there is no Persian translation available. It is a collection of articles written separately by author and published in credible philosophical journals. The unifying subject of the articles is the relationship between Descartes’ philosophical and scientific areas of interest. This article intends to introduce the author and covers the literary style of the book in English in brief. The article mainly addresses the introduction and critical analysis of the book itself, in two parts successively: form and content. This article intends to introduce the author and covers the literary style of the book in English in brief. The article mainly addresses the introduction and critical analysis of the book itself, in two parts successively: form and content.

Introduction: Some evidence suggest that poor reading is partially related to basic visual function deficiencies, including: distance visual acuity (DVA), near visual acuity (NVA), accommodative facility (AF) and saccadic eye movements (SEM).There are few controversial studies investigating the efficacy of vision therapy on reading abilities (i.e. reading accuracy, type and frequency of reading errors and reading comprehension). The aim of this study was to explore any possible effect of basic visual function therapeutic interventions on reading and phonological abilities in monolingual Persian speaking students.Method: This quasi-experimental study assessed the basic visual functions of 10 poor readers from primary schools in Tehran (mean age=10.2 years, female=3, male=7) and a sex-age-matched control group (mean age=10.5) using the Snellen chart, ±2.00 D lenses and a fixation-refixation technique. Each participant was enrolled in the study following basic assessments of his/her general cognitive functions, reading skills and basic visual functions. The Assessment of the Persian Reading Abilities (APRA), Spoonerisms and Raven's Progressive Matrices were also used in both groups. Poor readers received 5 weeks interventions for AF, SEM, only. Both groups were retested in 5 weeks and then one month later.Results: At baseline, poor readers performed significantly worse than controls in reading accuracy (p<0.01), reading comprehension (p<0.01), SEM (p<0.01) and AF (both near & distance p<0.01) with no significant differences on DVA, NVA. After vision therapy, the poor reader group showed a remarkable improvement in reading accuracy (p<0.01) and reading comprehension (p<0.01) associated with the enhancement of both AF (both near and distant, p<0.01) and SEM (p<0.01).Conclusion: Visual therapy appears to improve basic visual functions, reading skills and phonological abilities. The latter improvement may be due to the saccadic intervention that may improve magnocellular function and in turn enhancement of the higher cognitive performance such as attention.

This study is an attempt to find the relationship between personality type of the learners and their performance on reading comprehension tests of two structurally different texts, i.e. narrative and cause/effect. To detect the relationship, a researcher-made reading comprehension comprising eight passages of both text structures and the Persian version of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator were administered to a group of 379 BA English students from different Iranian universities. The collected data were analyzed and the results indicated that the distribution of subjects' scores on both tests were not normal. Therefore, two Kruskal-Wallis tests were run to detect the relationship. The results of the Kruskal-Wallis tests showed no difference between the subjects' performance on both tests. In order to find out if any specific personality type group had performed better on one of the tests, eight paired sample T-tests were run. The results indicated that compared to the cause/effect mean scores, all groups had performed better on the narrative test, but the difference between the mean scores of STJ, SFJ, SFP, and NFP personality groups were significant. Therefore, it was concluded that the inclusion of most of the feeling subjects, who possess certain personality characteristics congruent with narrative textual features, in these four categories has assisted their better performance. Drawing on the results of the study, implications of the results are suggested.

Background & Objectives: Children with reading disorders struggle to learn to read, write, and spell despite progress in other subjects. These children may have poor reading comprehension and difficulty with writing and punctuation. Children with reading disorders usually suffer from negative personality behavioral problems that affect their quality of life. This outcome is due to their communication problems within the family and incorrect parent–child relationships. Social skills are a set of acceptable learned skills that enable a person to have an effective relationship with others and to avoid unreasonable social reactions. Various research studies have emphasized the importance of executive functions in understanding and learning social skills. Digital games have many motivational dimensions that can be effectively used as a strategy in learning environments. In various formats, numerous and diverse programs have been designed to improve cognitive skills, including active memory. Among the most used and popular programs are cognitive computer games. Cognitive computer games positively affect the working memory and reading performance of students with disabilities in reading. Computer games challenge people's skills like accuracy, speed of action, and problem–solving ability. Therefore, these types of games can be used to improve the performance of students who have problems with attention, accuracy, or problem–solving. The important point is that computer game training was not done to solve the social skills problems and reading performance of children with reading disorders. Therefore, the novelty of the research topic emphasizes its necessity. In this regard, the current research aims to investigate the effectiveness of computer games on the social skills and reading performance of children with reading disorders. Methods: This quasi–experimental research employed a pretest–posttest and follow–up design with a control group. The statistical population comprised all the elementary school students referred to learning disorder centers in Saqqez City, Iran, in 2021–2022. A list of children with reading disorders was first prepared to select the members. Then, among these people, 30 qualified volunteers entered the study as a sample and were randomly placed into the experimental and control groups (15 people in each group). The inclusion criteria were having reading problems, not taking psychiatric drugs in the last three months before entering the research, and not receiving or participating in parallel treatment courses during the time of the research. The exclusion criteria were as follows: non–cooperation, not completing the assignments presented in the meetings, and absence of more than two sessions in the meetings. It has been education. After that, the experimental group participants received ten 60–minute intervention sessions of computer games. No training was provided for the control group. To measure the social skills of the subjects in the research, the social skills questionnaire of Gresham and Elliott (Gresham and Elliott, 1990) was used, and to measure the reading performance, the Nama test (Moradi et al., 2007) was used. In all three pretest, posttest, and follow–up stages, the mentioned questionnaires were implemented for the experimental and control groups. Data analysis was done using variance analysis with repeated measurement using SPSS version 23 software at a significance level 0.05. Results: The results of the variance analysis with repeated measurements showed that the intervention of computer games significantly increased the social skills (p=0.001) and reading performance (p=0.001) of children with reading disorders. The impact of computer games on social skills was 0.87, and reading performance was 0.32. Conclusion: The present study's findings indicate that computer games improve the social skills and reading performance of children with reading disorders.

Background: Through research on the role of storytelling skills in building learning and writing elements, little attention has been paid to assessing strengths and weaknesses in story structure, especially microstructure, in dyslexic students. The purpose of this study is to assess the role of this structure as a manifestation of the verbal and cognitive performance of these students. Methods: This is a descriptive analysis study. To identify dyslexic students, the Screening test for dyslexia diagnosis by Shafii et al. and Shirazi-Nilipour’, s reading diagnostic test were used. A total of 31 dyslexic students at secondary elementary school were identified during testing, and the remaining subjects (n=35 students) were assigned to the control group. The story retelling test was used to assess students’,storytelling skills. A parametric test (independentsamples t-test) was used to compare normally distributed data. A nonparametric test (Mann-Whitney U test) was used for non-normal data. Pearson’, s correlation test was also used to examine correlations for normally distributed data, and Spearman’, s correlation test was used for non-normal data. Results: Students with dyslexia had significantly lower mean scores in all substructures of the macrostructure, including topic maintenance, sequence of events, and the main information. They also had significantly lower microstructure scores, including mean length of utterance, conjunction use, and syntactic complexity, compared to their normal counterparts (P<0. 05). Conclusion: Dyslexic students perform worse than their peers on most micro- and macrostructures of the retelling test. In other words, these students have poor linguistic and cognitive prerequisites for understanding and mastering reading skills. On the other hand, the results show that there is a meaningful association between storytelling skills and subsequent reading and comprehension acquisition.

Introduction: This study was aimed to examine effectiveness of Stress Inoculation Training on physical aggression, verbal aggression, anger and hostility in adolescent boys.Method: This study is quasi-experimental with pretest - posttest and control group. The study population included adolescent boys aged 12-15 years old in Mashhad. The sample was 24 students that were selected according to gain the highest score in Buss Perry Aggression Questionnaire and randomly was assigned to experimental and control groups. Buss Perry Aggression Questionnaire was used as tool in current study. The experimental group received 8 sessions of Stress Inoculation Training, whereas no treatment received by control group. Multivariate Analyses of covariance and One-Way Analysis of covariance were used to analyze the data.Results: Findings indicated that Stress Inoculation Training significantly reduced hostility, physical aggression and verbal aggression in experimental group in comparison to control group (p<0.01). However, no significant change was observed in anger in experimental group rather than the control group.Conclusion: Stress Inoculation Training is an effective method that affect cognitive and behavioral dimension which can reduc aggression and hostility. However, more comprehensive intervention (including family and society) with more therapeutic sessions would probably be effective in reducing anger (emotional dimension of aggression).

Purpose: To investigate visual performance during reading under different illumination sources. Methods: This experimental quantitative study included 40 (20 females and 20 males) emmetropic participants with no history of ocular pathology. The participants were randomly assigned to read a near visual task under four different illuminations (400‑ lux constant): compact fluorescent light (CFL), tungsten light (TUNG), fluorescent tube light (FLUO), and light emitting diode (LED). Subsequently, we evaluated the participants’ experiences of eight symptoms of visual comfort. Results: The mean age of the participants was 19. 86 ± 1. 09 (range: 18– 21) years. There was no statistically significant difference between the reading rates of males and females under the different illuminations (P = 0. 99); however, the reading rate was fastest among males under CFL, and among females under FLUO. One way analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed a strong significant difference (P = 0. 001) between males and females (P = 0. 002) regarding the visual performance and illuminations. Conclusion: This study demonstrates the influence of illumination on reading rate; there were no significant differences between males and females under different illuminations, however, males preferred CFL and females preferred FLUO for faster reading and visual comfort. Interestingly, neither preferred LED or TUNG. Although energy‑ efficient, visual performance under LED is poor; it is uncomfortable for prolonged reading and causes early symptoms of fatigue.

Aim: The aim of this study was to determine the effectiveness of an empowerment program based on self-regulation executive functions on the reading performance of dyslexic primary school students. Method: The study employed quasi-experimental design, using pretest, posttest and follow up with the control group. The population of the study was all dyslexic boys students in the fourth grade of primary school in Islamshahr city in the academic year of 201718. 38 students were selected through combined sampling method (Census and Cluster sampling), and were randomly divided into an experiment group and a control group (20 in the experiment group and 18 in the control group). The experimental group received an intervention program in 2 months (15 sessions of 50 minutes, and 2 months of environmental modifications and practical interventions that was integrated into daily curricula). Data were analyzed by multivariate analysis of covariance, one-variable covariance. Findings: The results showed there were significant differences between reading speed, reading accuracy and comprehension students with and without dyslexia. Conclusion: the empowerment program based on selfregulation executive functions can improve the reading performance of dyslexic primary school students.