This article discusses the movement toward focusing on the individual rather than the disabling condition when referring to people with disabilities and contrasts acceptable and unacceptable terminology for people with different types of disabilities. The terms "impairment,""disability," and "handicap" are defined. (CR)

Examines a source of linguistic data--newspapers--and discusses related problems of text-type classification and feature interpretation. Using texts from East Africa as a database, the article assesses the influence of different production contexts on the text composition and analyzes the samples for the multifunctional variable of…

This article provides information on elective mutism, a persistent refusal to talk despite the ability to speak and comprehend spoken language. It covers the history, characteristics, classification, differential diagnosis, and treatment of elective mutism. Treatments covered include psychodynamic, family intervention, behavior modification, drug…

This article documents the wide variation in terminology used by the U.S. Department of Education and the 50 states in gathering data on deaf and hard-of-hearing children and in determining eligibility for services. Recommendations for achieving uniformity in defining and applying the terms "deaf" and "hard of hearing" are…

Examined three- to four-month-old infants' ability to form perceptually based categorical representation in the domains of natural kinds and artifacts. By showing the availability of perceptually driven basic and superordinate-like representations in early infancy that closely correspond to adult conceptual categories, findings underscored the…

Presents an activity that introduces the historical developments in science that led to the discovery of the periodic table and lets students experience scientific discovery firsthand. Enables students to learn about patterns among the elements and experience how scientists analyze data to discover patterns and build models. (JRH)

This study investigated the relationship between skill performance levels of 31 elite male wheelchair basketball players and their international player classification level. Analysis of a skills test of each athlete indicated that there is a need to reevaluate the functional classification system used in wheelchair basketball competitions. (SM)

Studied black five-year olds from a school in an impoverished urban area (n=32) and white five-year olds from a blue-collar suburban area (n=32) for their school achievement at the end of kindergarten. The same cognitive intervention was attempted with children from both school populations. Discusses research methodology and research findings. (KW)

Four human judges agreed highly among themselves about the presence of errors committed by 60 adults solving algebra word problems, but were in less agreement about categorizing faults. An expert system agreed with judges about correctness of answers, but was in even less agreement about categorizing the faults. (SLD)

Demonstrates a method of visual analysis which takes advantage of the pooling technique of topic-document set creation in the TREC collection. Describes the procedures used to create the initial visual fields, and their respective treatments as vectors without stemming and vectors with stemming; discusses results of these treatments and…

Connections between current and historical autism-specific behavior reported using the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised were investigated using 93 subjects showing autistic behaviors. The association was high, although there was a tendency for diagnostic exclusion of adolescents and adults, especially verbal, high-functioning individuals who…

Investigated 7-year-olds', 9-year-olds', and adults' ability to classify children's and adults' faces by sex using only biological based internal facial structure. Found that participants categorized adult faces by sex at accuracy levels varying from just above chance (7-year-olds) to nearly perfect (adults). All groups were less accurate for…

Four adults with mild mental retardation were taught to sort based on what two pictures had in common and to comply with a series of instructions to sort the pictures selectively. After failing the task, they were taught to act on what they told themselves and self-instructed correctly. (Contains references.) (Author/CR)

Describes results of an exploratory survey that examined public library electronic mail reference services and the patrons who used them. Discusses results of print questionnaires and Web-based questionnaires that investigated user satisfaction and classified email reference questions received by public libraries. Library questionnaire and web…

Discusses five-kingdom classification and the changes in understanding over the years. First published in 1983. (YDS)