Recommendations for surveillance programs include: (1) screening systems should include multiple sources of data for decision making; (2) conceptually, screening should include procedures that assess the ongoing transaction between the child and the caregivers in his/her environment; and (3) surveillance should be conducted serially over time.…

Predictive validity of the Test for Auditory Comprehension of Language and the Developmental Test of Visual Motor Integration was investigated singly and in combination for a group of preschool children. The results indicated little practical significance in using both instruments as opposed to either test singly. (Author/CP)

Based on studies and clinical findings, two techniques for testing infant vision are described: near-retinoscopy (used to assess the refractive state of infants and young children) and a fast preferential looking procedure (used to assess the acuity of infants up to one year of age). (DLS)

Three approaches to the evaluation of diagnostic decision making for handicapped students are discussed: accuracy, sensitivity and specificity, and ROC (receiver-operating-characteristic) analysis. ROC analysis is explained to allow the diagnostician to vary the decision threshold depending on the index of suspicion and relative costs and benefits…

Four hundred eighty-six preschool children were screened with the Denver Developmental Screening Test (DDST) and the Preschool Language Scale (PLS). Children who failed the screening were referred for a formal language assessment. Results indicated that the DDST is slightly more effective than the PLS in identifying preschool children who need…

The interplay between the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic aspects of the oral language performance is discussed. Performance features and their cutoff criteria are suggested for a clinical use of the reformulation task in an initial pass/fail screening of the oral language ability of students at the upper elementary school level. (Author)

Compared the SIT with the WISC-R for a group of intellectually gifted students. Results indicated reduced correlations between the measures. (Author)

A prekindergarten screening program using a team consisting of two kindergarten teachers, a school psychologist, a speech/language therapist, a nurse, and an occupational therapist/special education teacher for the identification of "high risk" children is described. (PHR)

School nurses are advised to change their programs from crisis-oriented health care to active case finding and preventive care. (JMF)

A study of 156 hearing impaired students (ages 3 to 14 years) was undertaken to see how many of the Ss suffered from a visual anomaly (disease, refractive error, or binocularity). (PHR)

Reviewed prevalence data on health parameters for football officials, noting outcomes when screening criteria were applied in preseason exams. Referees had a lower risk than the national 10-year coronary heart disease risk but a higher risk compared with that of the low-risk population. Results suggested that more graded exercise testing was…

Investigates the Drug Use Screening Inventory's (DUSI) utility for identifying youth who will develop a disorder of abuse/dependence. Findings indicate that the DUSI, taking only 15-20 minutes to complete, is a useful practical instrument to identify youth who could benefit most from prevention interventions. (Contains 12 references and 4 tables.)…

The Children's Self-Report Social Skills Scale (CS4), a 21-item instrument, was developed to measure children's perspectives on their own social skills. Test-retest reliability and internal consistency reliability of CS4 scores were .74 and .96, respectively. Principal component analysis revealed 3 reliable components: Social Rules, Likeability,…

This article introduces the concept of genetic testing for deafness. Two genes that make appreciable contributions to the autosomal recessive non-syndromic deafness (ARNSD) genetic load are reviewed, GJB2 and SLC26A4. In addition, the unique aspects of genetic counseling for deafness and recurrence chance estimates are explained. (Contains…

Although education level reveals nothing directly about an individual's productivity, there is a positive relation between productivity (ability) and chosen education level. This paper describes a study that shows a positive private and social return to educational screening. Firms' use of contingency contracts can be either efficient or…