A pilot study examined Singaporean parents' views on the value of various curriculum skill areas for their young children with disabilities. Findings indicated that parents gave the highest priority for self-help functional life skills, followed by social relation skills, community-based functional life skills, and functional academic skills.…

A study examining the role of heritage language (HL) competence in social relationships among second-generation language minorities surveyed 114 Korean Americans. HL speakers had a strong ethnic identity and a greater understanding and knowledge of cultural values, ethics, and manners than HL nonspeakers. HL competence also provided professional…

Child's play may be at risk in today's technologically-oriented society. The limited interactive capacities of high-tech toys constrain the possibilities for cognitive development, interpersonal learning, and the quality of relationships that can be formed. Current high-tech toys change the nature of play, so that the object, rather than the…

Imitation offers a gateway to relationship. This paper seeks to explore that capacity by describing the therapeutic approach of "Intensive Interaction". The research literature on imitation contains relatively little about imitation used in an intervention capacity, concentrating instead on the emergence of imitative abilities during infant and…

This article reviews the literature on peer relations and social skills of children with learning disabilities (LD). Two risk models are discussed. The single-risk model suggests that for some children with LD, social skills deficits are inherent in the disability. These deficits lead to problems with social relationships, which foster…

To develop a comprehensive educational program for children and adolescents with Asperger syndrome and children and adolescents with high-functioning autism, goals and objectives need to be identified in those areas of development that support social communicative competence. The role of a child's social partners, however, is often neglected by…

This paper reports the development of performance indicators for measuring primary and secondary students? affective and social outcomes of schooling. Psychometric properties as well as norms for the selected performance indicators for Hong Kong students were developed. The performance indicator system developed in this study has been subsequently…

This article presents a longitudinal case study of a child named Cody identified with specific language impairment. Cody was followed from 4 to 19 years of age, at which time he compared his social skills with those of peers: "It's like they're driving sports car and I'm on a tricycle." His initial long- and short-term intervention goals are…

Far more has been written about the possible outcomes of cross-age mentoring than about actual outcomes and the processes that lead to change. This study examined the effect of mentors' attendance on their mentees' outcomes after six months of developmental mentoring. Developmental mentoring is a structured, cross-age peer mentoring program…

Proficiency in social interaction with adults and peers is an important outcome in early childhood. The development of an experimental measure for assessing growth in social skills in children birth to 3 years is described. Based on the general outcome measurement (GOM) approach (e.g., Deno, 1997), the measure is intended for use by early…

Reviews of research on deinstitutionalization show that investigators have focused primarily on adaptive behavior changes of "movers," while paying minimal attention to "stayers." Analysis of their research also revealed some methodological problems. We assessed 150 movers and 150 stayers in 1994, before deinstitutionalization began in 1997. We…

Some of the issues that dominated, or at least held sway, in the neuropsychology of learning disabilities (LD) in the 1970s included: the definition of LD, whether there are reliable and valid subtypes of LD, whether and to what extent LD are related to cerebral dysfunction, and whether LD are related to types and/or degrees of psychosocial…

A boy who was visually impaired was trained to self-evaluate his social interaction, and a sighted peer was trained to provide relevant feedback to the boy through verbal reinforcement by the researcher. This feedback enhanced the boy's social interaction with his sighted peers, improved certain aspects of his social behavior, and increased the…

Relations among effortful control/low negative emotionality, immediate reactions in a situation that usually calls for the masking of disappointment (i.e., the use of display rules), and social competence/adjustment were investigated for 78 preschool children (mean age=4.87 years). Parents, teachers, and peers rated children on negative…

Social skills deficits and excesses are a defining aspect of mental retardation (MR). Research indicates that there is an established relationship between social skills and maladaptive behaviors. A number of studies demonstrate that the social competence of individuals with MR and comorbid psychopathology can be enhanced with social skills…