Background: This longitudinal study of 48 children diagnosed with autism at 2-5 years of age was designed to test the hypothesis that diagnosis would remain stable for most of the sample but that there would be improvements in symptom severity, adaptive behavior, and emotional responsiveness in adolescence. Methods: A sample of children with…

Background: In this study, psychosocial functioning of different groups of young children with learning problems was investigated using a diverse set of psychosocial variables (including behaviour problems, academic motivation, social preference, and self-concept). Methods: For this purpose, children with low academic achievement, with a specific…

The predictive validity and utility of assessment procedures can be increased by adding predictors to the prediction supplied by general ability tests. Of Jensen's early work comes the suggestion of focusing on the cognitive ability short-term memory (STM), especially for low-"g" Black children. Meta-analysis convincingly shows high…

A meta-analysis was performed on the 133 cognitive and behavioral papers in autism using comparison groups in the 1999-2002 period. High-functioning (average IQ: 84.7), adolescents (average, 14.4 years) are largely dominant. IQ is the most frequent matching variable in use (51.2%). The instruments that are most frequently used to determine IQ or…

The ultimate aim of this research is to specify and implement a general authoring framework for content and knowledge engineering for Intelligent Educational Systems (IES). In this context we attempt to develop an authoring tool supporting this framework that is powerful in its functionality, generic in its support of instructional strategies and…

Evaluation of teacher performance is usually done with the use of ratings made by students, peers, and principals or supervisors, and at times, self-ratings made by the teachers themselves. The trouble with this practice is that it is obviously subjective, and vulnerable to what Glass and Martinez call the "politics of teacher…

Performance assessment is an important task in all levels of education, both as input for identifying remedial needs of individual students and for improving general quality of education. Although explicit assessment measures can be obtained through objective standardized testing, it is much more difficult to capture fuzzier, or tacit, performance…

Of the many books read by this author over the past several years, one in particular held his attention: "Becoming human" by J. Vanier (1998). In this book, Vanier spells out several interconnected principles for promoting and practicing a curriculum of "becoming human." Vanier's first principle is that "all humans are…

One hundred and fifty-five students (average age of 127 months) were tested using the WRAT-3 reading and arithmetic subtests, the Self-Perception Profile for Children with Learning Disabilities (SPPLD) and the Children's Depression Inventory (CDI). One year later they were again tested with the same instruments. The authors hypothesised that…

Background: There is a need to develop and adapt therapies for use with people with learning disabilities who have mental health problems. Aims: To examine the performance of people with learning disabilities on two cognitive therapy tasks (emotion recognition and discrimination among thoughts, feelings and behaviours). We hypothesized that…

This study examines teachers' beliefs and their practices of emotional socialization in three child care centers. Interviews with teachers revealed that teachers shared some, but not all, of their beliefs with regard to their role in children's emotional development and views of their own socialization practices. The findings from classroom…

This paper describes part of the results of a study investigating how adolescents, between the ages of 14 and 15, construct and share meaning about their local environments. Specifically, the results presented focus on how adolescents perceive and interpret spatial and three-dimensional data presented in various formats, such as in terms of…

On December 3, 2004, President Bush signed into law the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA, 2004). The revised law is different from the previous version in at least one important respect. Whereas practitioners were previously encouraged to use IQ-achievement discrepancy to identify children with learning disabilities…

An important outcome of Singapore's education system is the development of creative thinking skills. This project investigates the impact of a creative dance unit on a class of Primary One (seven-year-old) children's usage of bodily kinaesthetic intelligence to solve problems. One key objective was for the researchers to observe something new,…

The current investigation was designed to examine the provision of cognitive stimulation to preschool-aged children from high-risk families. Participants were drawn from the Concordia Longitudinal Risk Project, a prospective, longitudinal investigation of individuals recruited in 1976-77 from lower SES neighbourhoods who were rated by childhood…