A review of the research on pharmacological interventions for students with attention deficit disorder finds that psychostimulants such as methylphenidate (Ritalin) are effective in improving focus and impulse control, but should be used in conjunction with psychosocial and behavioral interventions. Comprehensive medical screenings and guidelines…

Meta-analysis on 25 studies found that both methodologically strong and weak studies demonstrated significant behavioral deficits of children with learning disabilities in 5 areas: on-task behavior, off-task behavior, conduct disorders, distractibility, and shy/withdrawn behavior. Effect sizes clustered around 1 standard deviation. (Author/DB)

The article describes a series of 10 games designed to improve the communication skills of pupils with severe learning difficulties. The games encourage attention development, initiating comments, and giving and receiving instructions. (DB)

Elementary children (n=112) comprising average IQ, high IQ, dyslexic, and normal readers were administered measures of planning, attention-arousal, simultaneous and successive processing, phonemic segmentation, and nonverbal IQ. Cognitive tasks differentiating dyslexic from normal readers were the successive processing tasks and two tasks of…

This study compared the clinical efficacy of a dopaminergic antagonist (amisulpride) and a dopaminergic agonist (bromocriptine) with 9 children (ages 4-13) with autism and probable severe mental retardation. The amisulpride acted preferentially on specific autism symptoms and the bromocriptine on motor hyperactivity and attention symptoms.…

Children between the ages of seven and nine years were given metalinguistic tasks and measures of field dependence-independence (FDI). Results showed a common basis for FDI and metalinguistic problems requiring high levels of control of linguistic processing but not for FDI and problems requiring high levels of analysis of linguistic knowledge.…

An ecological study was made of persistent repetitious movements by 12 developmentally disabled adults in a horticultural day work program. Fewer dysfunctional patterns occurred during times when staff were actively teaching than when the trainee was isolated or resting. Results argued for teaching skills in terms of coordinated response…

This article examines school dropout rates, the impact of dropouts on society, and the prevention of dropouts by early identification of "reluctant learners" and early instructional interventions that address motivation, self-concept, attention, and learning strategies. At the secondary level, intervention should focus on school conditions that…

Examines data from a think-aloud study and explores how randomly selected undergraduates react to "extreme" intensifiers and hedges. Results indicate that think-aloud data can within limits provide valid evidence of attention to specific words, and that there is a need to distinguish between attending to a word and using it to formulate…

Examined role of toddlers' attention deployment strategies in predicting 5-year-olds' delay-of-gratification strategies. Found that toddlers' use of effective attention deployment strategies to cope with separation from mother and with maternal behavior (controlling or noncontrolling) predicted effective delay-of-gratification strategies at age 5,…

Qualitative analysis of videotape recordings of seven mothers and their sons with autism (ages 2 and 3) found that mothers mostly engaged in verbal regard (conversation) and directive behaviors. Sons were able to give some form of regard 69% of the time, mostly in the form of active task participation rather than verbal or visual regard.…

A counterbalanced, multiple-baseline, across-subjects design was used to determine if attention and performance monitoring had differential effects on the on-task and spelling study behavior of 6 elementary students with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in the general education classroom. Both self-monitoring of attention and…

Background: The aim of this study was to investigate attention orienting triggered by another's gaze direction in autism. Method: Twelve high-functioning children with autism and gender- and age-matched normal control children were studied using two tasks. In the first task, children were asked to detect laterally presented target stimuli preceded…

Objective: To figure out features of autism before the age of one and to explore the pathways of early social and nonsocial attention in autism through home movies. Method: Home movies of 15 children later diagnosed with autism, are compared with home movies of 13 typical children. The films of the two groups have been mixed and rated by blind…

Debate continues over the hypothesis that children with language or literacy difficulties have a genuine auditory processing deficit. Several recent studies have reported deficits in frequency discrimination (FD), but it is unclear whether these are genuine perceptual impairments or reflective of the comorbid attentional problems that exist in…