This commentary discusses whether the American Association on Mental Retardation should change its name. It argues that changing the name would not change the stigma, and would harm advocacy efforts by allowing legislators to use a terminology change to narrow eligibility for supports. (Contains one reference.) (CR)

Computational models of infant categorization often fail to elaborate the transitional mechanisms that allow infants to achieve adult performance. In this article, we apply a successful connectionist model of adult category learning to developmental data. The Supervised and Unsupervised Stratified Adaptive Incremental Network (SUSTAIN) model is…

Investigates use of a functional approach to discourse analysis--knowledge structure analysis, which focuses on meaning, form, and function simultaneously--to evaluate both writing development and content learning. Examined written texts in science, produced by English-as-a-Second-Language students with limited to intermediate English language…

We attempted to differentiate the family environments of youth with Conduct Disorder (CD) compared to youth with a depressive disorder. Participants were 34 adolescents from a residential treatment facility. The K-SADS-P was used to determine the youth's diagnosis, while their family environment was assessed by the Self Report Measure of Family…

The primary objective of this paper is to apply the educational theories of Kolb's experiential learning and Bloom's educational taxonomy in restructuring the course "Renewable energy engineering". The steps of the research procedure investigate the application of learning theories to the restructuring of the course and the introduction of…

This study examined validity of the School Function Assessment (SFA) and interrater reliability of occupational therapist and teacher ratings of students' school function. The validity of the SFA was examined using the known-group method in 35 participants in kindergarten through 7th grade attending elementary schools; 15 students with learning…

The study explored the effectiveness of a discussion support taxonomy used in a course in which graduate students served as online discussion leaders. The students' ability to effectively use the taxonomy as a support tool to facilitate the discussions was examined. A content analysis of the discussion transcripts was conducted, and findings…

In all 245 British adults provided self- and parental estimates on a normal IQ distribution scale of the 20 second-order abilities identified by Cattell [Cattell, R. (1971). "Abilities: Their structure, growth and action." New York: Houghton Mifflin] as well as their and their parents' overall (g) IQ. After controlling for age,…

Stable nonnative varieties of English acquired and used in the absence of native English input can diverge systematically from native varieties over time (Cheshire, 1991; Kachru, 1983; Platt, Weber, & Ho, 1984). Focusing on Indian English article use, this study asks the following question: If divergence is indeed occurring, do new features…

The challenge of the semantic web is the provision of distributed information with well-defined meaning, understandable for different parties. Particularly, applications should be able to provide individually optimized access to information by taking the individual needs and requirements of the users into account. In this paper we propose a…

Classification studies are important for practitioners who need to identify individuals for specialized treatment or intervention. When interventions are irreversible or misclassifications are costly, information about the proficiency of different classification procedures becomes invaluable. This study furnishes information about the relative…

Communication difficulties in multicultural clinical settings can be exacerbated by translators, but their actual impact on medical decisions has not been systematically evaluated. This study sought to determine the influence of translators participating in clinical encounters in which English-speaking clinicians offered amniocentesis to…

This paper draws on findings from a major research project conducted between 1998 and 2000 on meanings of reconciliation in the school education sector. Using data collected from surveys and drawing from the community context in which schools exist, it explores and analyses meanings of reconciliation within school communities when the discourse of…

Variations in the amount and nature of early language to which children are exposed have been linked to their subsequent ability (e.g. Huttenlocher, Haight, Bryk, Seltzer & Lyons, 1991; Hart & Risley, 1995). In three computational simulations, we explore how differences in linguistic experience can explain differences in word learning ability due…

How can one better use modern CALL resources to help language learners to build up a larger target language (TL) vocabulary quickly? A major need that quickly becomes apparent at the intersection of the fields of second language vocabulary acquisition (SLVA) and computer-assisted language learning (CALL) is the lack of sufficient research with…