Empathy is an essential part of normal social functioning, yet there are precious few instruments for measuring individual differences in this domain. In this article we review psychological theories of empathy and its measurement. Previous instruments that purport to measure this have not always focused purely on empathy. We report a new…

The effects of appetitive controllability on behavioral and cortisol reactivity to novelty in 12 infant rhesus monkeys were studied. Surrogate-peer-reared infants had homecage access to food treats contingently via lever pressing ("master") or noncontingently ("yoked") for 12 weeks from postnatal month 2. Masters lever-pressed more, but did not…

Patterns of individual scores are used to critique citywide testing of urban children at the beginning of their schooling. Of the 47 children identified as gifted in a citywide assessment, 25 exhibited substantial intra individual differences between skill subscales on a standardized intelligence test. Eighty percent of the children had a…

This is a study of the lexical and grammatical abilities of 16 lexically precocious talkers. These children, aged 2;0 were compared to their age-matched peers, 22 typical talkers aged 2;0, and their expressive vocabulary-matched peers, 22 typical talkers aged 2;6. Individual differences in children's lexical knowledge at 2;0 were stable -- evident…

This study investigated the social regulatory function of infant nondistress vocalization in modulating maternal response. Thirteen infants and their mothers were observed weekly in a face-to-face interaction situation from 4 to 24 weeks. After the occurrences and the speech quality of infant nondistress vocalization were identified, maternal…

Fifteen young adults with intellectual disability and 17 college students learned the locations of 5 landmarks on an island map and then scanned from one landmark to another. In the perception condition, the landmarks were visible; in the imagery condition, they were not. The rate of scanning over distance was similar for perception and imagery…

Persons with mental retardation often exhibit greater interference in visual selective attention tasks than do persons matched with them on CA. My goal here was to evaluate whether differences in distractor interference between persons with and without mental retardation may be related to differences in negative priming. Fifteen participants with…

Reading and speechreading are both visual skills based on speech and language processing. Here we explore individual differences in speechreading in profoundly prelingually deaf adults, hearing adults with a history of dyslexia, and hearing adults with no history of a literacy disorder. Speechreading skill distinguished the three groups: the deaf…

Virtually all research affirms the importance of a general factor (i.e., Spearman's "g") in accounting for individual differences in intelligence (Spearman, 1904). However, some scholars have suggested that cognitive abilities are not organised uniformly across all levels of age and ability. Using standardisation data from the Woodcock Johnson…

Paulsen and Wells (1998) stated that, "it seems unlikely that substantial differences in epistemological beliefs across domains would persist in studies of faculty or other more advanced experts," (p. 380). This statement implies the existence of an upper limit or ceiling effect in the epistemological beliefs among experts. Faculty…

At Camelot Schools there is a firm belief that every child with autism is a success story waiting to be told. Children with the disorder often have difficulty expressing their needs and engaging in social contact with others. It is important for parents to know that progress is possible, and they do not have to go it alone. Camelot Schools'…

The Zahlen-Verbindungs-Test (ZVT) represents a highly feasible measure of information-processing speed that correlates quite highly with standard psychometric tests of intelligence. The present study was designed to identify specific stages of the sensorimotor processing system that may account for individual differences in overall variability of…

Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to investigate how young people are using school-based sources of sex and relationships education (SRE) to obtain information and advice. Design/methodology/approach: The paper shows how anonymous self-completion questionnaires were administered to young people aged between 12 and 19 years in three secondary…

This paper reflects upon and connects the findings of two research projects that examined the sexual inequalities experienced by disabled young gay men. Using some of the data for illustrative purposes, we explore the consequences of the dominant heteronormative discursive practices that they experienced within sex education classes. Drawing on…

Relatively little is known about characteristics of sexual assault survivors who present to the emergency room. Examination of differences in survivor, assault, and exam characteristics by type of offender (intimate partner, acquaintance, acquaintance-just-met, and stranger) was conducted using intake data collected from 331 women who presented to…