This article examines recent discussion about changing the term "mental retardation" within the broader framework of three distinct processes: naming (terminology), defining, and classifying. The current status of each process is described, especially as represented in the 1992 American Association on Mental Retardation manual. Guiding…

This discussion of the World Health Organization's International Classification of Impairments, Disabilities and Handicaps (ICIDH) points out ICIDH merits, applications, and problems concerning definitions of basic terms of the ICIDH. It suggests that the model of the consequences of disease underlying the ICIDH should be developed further to a…

Assessed the relative contribution of dynamic and summary features of vocal frequency to the discrimination of pragmatic categories in infant-directed speech. Forty-nine mothers were instructed to use their voice to get their infant's attention, show approval, and provide comfort. Findings suggest that both dynamic and summary features are…

Examined differences in first-, third-, and fifth-graders' metamemory about influences of conceptual relations on free recall of a list of words from two categories and an unrelated list. Found that older children attributed superior recall of related material to categorical relations, reported categorical organization strategies, and demonstrated…

Three experiments examined factors influencing whether young children consider function, as opposed to appearance or shape, when extending names of novel artifacts. Findings indicated that 4-year-olds extend names based on demonstrated function more often when that function provides a plausible causal account of perceptible object structure, when…

Presents a normative typology for classifying the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Third Edition (WISC-III) factor index profiles according to profile shape. Current analyses indicate that overall profile level accounted for a majority of the variance in WISC-III index scores, but a considerable proportion of the variance was because of…

Tested claims by Lucy (1992a, 1992b) that differences between the number marking systems used by Yucatec Maya and English lead speakers of these languages to differentially attend to either the material composition or the shape of objects. Replicated Lucy's critical objects' classification experiments using speakers of English and Japanese.…

This study focuses specifically on teacher verbal behaviors that foster interaction in a two-way interactive television classroom. Studies research on taxonomies of teaching styles and discourse analysis to determine which components would comprise the most practical and useful set of behaviors for the distance education teacher and researcher.…

Develops a conceptual framework of research genres that illustrates the complex multidisciplinary roots of multicultural education. Includes examples of research to clarify the nature of the genres and the interactive connections across genres within the framework as a whole. Discusses implications for practice. (SLD)

Examines the factors that motivate colleges and universities to merge and the extent to which these factors are unique to merger or also motivate other forms of inter-institutional cooperation. Develops a taxonomy of inter-institutional combination and of the factors that induce institutional behavior towards cooperation. (EV)

Presents an efficient text categorization (or text classification) algorithm for document retrieval of natural language texts that generates bigrams (two-word phrases) and uses the information gain metric, combined with various frequency thresholds. Experimental results suggest that the bigrams can substantially raise the quality of feature sets.…

The question of innateness, which naturally arises in respect of the method of category construction proposed by vantage theory, is notoriously difficult. Discusses some of the problems inherent in this type of issue, along with attendant assumptions. Then, turns to what might constitute possible grounding for vantage theory. (Author/VWL)

Shows how a theorem proven by H. Brogden (1951, 1959) can be used to estimate the allocation average (a predictor based classification of a test battery) assuming that the predictor intercorrelations and validities are known and that the predictor variables have a joint multivariate normal distribution. (SLD)

This rebuttal of a response to the author's original article on improved classification of stuttering in the context of disability, impairment, and handicap, stresses that the model originally proposed carefully distinguishes the two major aspects of stuttering and offers definitions of impairment, disability, and handicap consistent with the…

Two studies explored tendency of adults and first-, second-, and fourth-graders to explain properties of living/nonliving natural kinds in teleological terms. Findings indicated that children were more likely than adults to broadly explain properties in teleological terms. The kinds of functions they endorsed varied with age. Experimental…