A review of the literature provides a synthesis of 18 years of research on preference assessment with individuals who have severe disabilities. Several procedural variables were identified that may influence the outcome of preference assessment, including context, assessment stimuli, selection response, and format. Recommendations for designing…

Describes a study that investigated individual differences in the construction of mental models of recursion in LOGO programming. The learning process was investigated from the perspective of Norman's mental models theory and employed diSessa's ontology regarding distributed, functional, and surrogate mental models, and the Luria model of brain…

Interviewed 3-, 5-, and 7-year olds about events in which a character commits potentially harmful or unfair acts based on moral beliefs or informational beliefs not shared by participants, or based on informational beliefs shared by participants. Found that children accounted for informational beliefs in their judgments, but that children…

Proposes a metatheory of problem solving. Describes differences among problems in terms of their structured ness, domain specificity (abstractness), and complexity; describes individual differences that affect problem solving; and presents a typology of problems, each of which engages different cognitive, affective, and conative process and…

Maintains that there are core-specific and non-core-specific domains of knowledge, but that only the core-specific domains benefit from innate skeletal structures. Asserts that core skeletal domains are universally shared, even though their particular foci may vary. Emphasizes that individuals vary in terms of the noncore domains they acquire.…

Studied a new method of measuring speed of processing, the modified blink reflex (MBR), in 2 experiments involving 57 adults. Findings are consistent with the view that interconnecting pathways allow higher level processing of a tone to prime the lower-level reflex pathway. Discusses implications for MBR and measurement of speed of processing.…

Discusses aspects of andragogy that are important for performance improvement professionals. Topics include the core andragogical model that presents core principles of adult learning; andragogy as an individual-transactional framework; individual learner differences; situational differences; and the Andragogy in Practice Model. (Contains 70…

Generalizes the p* class of models for social network data to predict individual-level attributes from network ties. The p* family is a class of models for social networks with parameters reflecting a wide variety of possible structural features. Illustrates the models with an empirical example involving a training course, with trainees' reactions…

Used confirmatory factor analysis to study the nature of memory distinctions underlying the performance of two samples of Vietnam veterans. One sample (n=96) had received head injuries resulting in relatively small lesions; the other (n=85) had not. A four-component model with verbal-episodic, visual-episodic, semantic, and short-term memory…

The determinants and distribution of attitudes towards suicide prevention were investigated in four groups of health professionals who are in contact with suicidal patients: general practitioners; accident and emergency nurses; psychiatrists in training; and community psychiatric nurses. Attitudes were shown to differ significantly between…

This introductory article briefly describes each of the following eight articles in this special issue on the neurology and genetics of learning related disorders. It notes the greater appreciation of learning disability as a set of complex disorders with broad and intricate neurological bases and of the large individual differences in how these…

Jones and Herbert describe research on deferred imitation and how this research reflects on the development of explicit memory in infancy. The article raises several interesting questions about how the medial temporal lobe memory system develops. In this commentary, I discuss some of the additional theoretical and empirical questions that are…

Should a society oriented towards justice provide parents with the possibility of enhancing their children's genes? The opposing arguments of authors in the Rawls School and of the theorist of communicative action, Jurgen Habermas, are analysed in terms of their key concepts. Their positions are then assessed from the point of view of the…

This article proposes an extension to Kintsch's Construction-Integration (CI) model of text comprehension, which changes its mathematical implementation and emphasizes the connectionist features of the model. Specifically, the extension proposed here (a) simulates the learning process in a connectionist manner by making explicit changes in the…

Nuthall's exceptional quantitative and qualitative analyses provide us with an illuminating picture of the cognitive and emotional struggles of low-scoring students. His poignant portrayals leave us to consider the types of classroom modifications and settings that will best help these students. The second section explores some apparent…