When education works, it creates productive, innovative citizens eager to contribute to a well-functioning democracy. In contrast, educational failure has lifelong consequences, with some individuals experiencing decades of preventable hardship. Dawn Flanagan and Joel Schneider write in this response that, like Kranzler, Floyd, Benson, Zabowski,…

In this rejoinder, the authors describe the aim of the original study as an effort to conduct a critical test of an important postulate underlying the Cross-Battery Assessment PSW approach (XBA PSW; Kranzler, Floyd, Benson, Zaboski, & Thibodaux, this issue). The authors used classification agreement analysis to examine the concordance between…

In his book, "Identity and the Museum Visitor Experience," John Falk makes the case that by understanding the underlying motivations that drive a visitor, a museum can create an experience that reflects a person's identity and therefore satisfy their motivation for visiting. According to Falk, this level of personal connection increases…

In this essay, the author aims to show how a specific focus on interactionally emergent and rhetorically negotiated elements of a communicative situation can enrich the study of difference in composition research. She develops this argument by first identifying two strategies used by writing researchers when forwarding new understandings of…

Instruction is the most important variable in special education, but it is often overlooked. Special instruction is what makes special education work, yet it is often neglected. We need to know more about how to teach both academic and behavioral skills more effectively, how behavioral and academic skills are interrelated, and how to choose those…

Despite the general trend to embrace interdisciplinarity in post-secondary education, we remain remarkably unclear concerning what we mean by interdisciplinarity and how it is achieved. Reporting on research conducted in a team-taught interdisciplinary course, I propose a new way of conceptualizing interdisciplinary connections, grounded in…

Comments on an article by Rips et al. L. J. Rips, S. Blok, and G. Newman (2006) proposed that singular concepts, which support the tracing of individual objects across their existence, are governed by a principle of causal continuity. They purported to show that causal continuity is better than existing theories at explaining judgments of the…

Responds to comments made by Rhemtulla and Xu on the current authors' original paper Concepts of individual objects (e.g., a favorite chair or pet) include knowledge that allows people to identify these objects, sometimes after long stretches of time. In an earlier article, the authors set out experimental findings and mathematical modeling to…

Despite the lack of empirical evidence, the term "foreign language learning disability" (FLLD) has become popular in the learning disabilities (LD) and foreign language literature. I contend that there is not a unique "disability" for foreign language learning and suggest instead that foreign language skills run along a continuum of very strong to…

This paper describes current neurological knowledge regarding the recognition, diagnosis, and classification of frontal lobe seizures, and then critiques a study by A. Gedye which suggested that self-injury may be involuntary and related to frontal lobe seizure activity. (JDD)

Proposes that colored compounds be classified by reference to a standard color-order system incorporating a color dictionary. Argues that the colors of new compounds could be incorporated into the characterization process and into computer storage systems. (TW)

There is debate about whether preschool-age children interpret words as referring to kinds or to classes defined by shape similarity. The authors argue that the shape bias reported in previous studies is a task-induced artifact rather than a genuine word-learning strategy. In particular, children were forced to extend an object's novel label to…

This paper responds to a critique (EC 601 489) of a paper on the possible involuntary nature of self-injurious movements in persons with mental retardation, resulting from undiagnosed frontal lobe seizures. The response discusses electroencephalographic techniques, the importance of observable ictal phenomena, the need for other corroborating…

Arguments supporting the conceptual validity of learning disabilities are presented against the background of current definitional problems. The need to differentiate between classification and identification and the importance of a shared attribute definition are stressed. It is argued that a taxonomy of learning disabilities and related…

Critically evaluates in terms of predictive and concurrent validity a widely used method of identifying children at risk in peer relations. This method emphasizes children's total rate of peer interaction, regardless of the quality or skillfulness of the interaction. Recommendations are given for future research in this area. (Author/DB)