American journal of mental retardation : AJMR最新文献

One phenomenon of language development is a dramatic increase in vocabulary size, driven by rapid word learning. For individuals with intellectual disabilities, the size of the lexicon often lags behind what would be expected both for CA and MA. I examined how well individuals with severely limited receptive vocabulary associated with intellectual disability retained a new word-picture map after a single exposure under conditions of varying difficulty. This study was a direct replication of a previous investigation with typically developing preschool children, enabling a direct comparison. Individuals with intellectual disabilities performed equally as well as control children in the initial exposure phase but poorer when asked to remember the initial map in the presence of other novel distracters or labels.

Children with developmental disabilities often report having few friends. Researchers have tended to focus on social skill deficits, neglecting other potent predictors of children's feelings of loneliness. In a sample of 82 children with developmental disabilities, we examined characteristics of the child at age 3 (i.e., the conclusion of early intervention services) as well as family income and emotional climate as predictors of children's reported feelings of loneliness at school during middle childhood (age 10). Children with lower levels of externalizing behavior problems at age 3 and from families with a more positive family climate, as indicated by the Family Environment Scale, reported less loneliness at age 10. Implications for children, families, and early intervention services are discussed.

A 24-item short form of the 96-item Developmental Behaviour Checklist was developed to provide a brief measure of Total Behaviour Problem Score for research purposes. The short form Developmental Behaviour Checklist (DBC-P24) was chosen for low bias and high precision from among 100 randomly selected item sets. The DBC-P24 was developed from epidemiological data in the first three waves of the Australian Child to Adult Development study, and cross validated for groups with autism, fragile X, Prader-Willi, and Williams in this longitudinal study and in cross sectional Dutch, English, and Finnish samples of young people with intellectual disability. The DBC-P24 has low bias and high precision in cross-validation samples and achieves high sensitivity and specificity to full DBC-P based caseness decisions.

Group and individual broad ability profiles of children with mental retardation and a matched sample of children with average achievement was investigated through use of the 7 Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) factor clusters from the Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Cognitive Abilities. Results indicate that, as a group, the ranked performance of the children with mental retardation on the CHC factor clusters was largely consistent with the clusters' g loadings. When compared to average-achieving matches, the children with mental retardation scored lower on all CHC factor clusters, but the groups displayed different patterns of performance. Despite normative deficiencies in IQs, children with mental retardation demonstrated a wide range of performance across measures. Implications for assessment and diagnosis are discussed.

Persons with and without mental retardation who were matched on CA took part in three tasks: an inhibition of return task, a location negative-priming task, and an identity negative-priming task. Having participants perform all three tasks allowed us to correlate performance among the tasks and assess the various relationships among performance measures on negative priming and inhibition of return. The participants with mental retardation did not exhibit negative priming of identity. However, they did exhibit negative priming of location and inhibition of return. The participants without mental retardation exhibited all three effects. A different pattern of correlations was observed for the participants with and those without mental retardation. Possible reasons for this difference are discussed.

The effects of social stimuli present and absent on laughing and smiling in 2 young children with Angelman syndrome were assessed via a multielement design. Results indicated that laughing and smiling for either child was unaffected by the social stimuli assessed in the social interaction condition. Results are discussed in terms of the effects of biological variables and environmental stimuli on children with specific genetic disorders across the lifespan.

A delayed matching-to-sample task with multiple sample stimuli was used to evaluate stimulus overselectivity in 70 individuals attending residential special-education schools. A Mental Age Equivalent score (MAE) was obtained for each student using the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. Twenty-one participants failed to complete matching-to-sample pretests (mean MAE = 3.70 years). Results on the multiple-sample test for the remaining 49 participants indicated no overselectivity for 14 students (mean MAE = 7.44 years) and were consistent with overselectivity for 35 students (mean MAE = 5.28 years). Performances of students with overselectivity were more variable than those with no overselectivity. The MAE scores were related to both matching-to-sample performance and stimulus overselectivity.

Kappa (Cohen, 1960) is a popular agreement statistic used to estimate the accuracy of observers. The response of kappa to differing baserates was examined and methods for estimating the accuracy of observers presented. Results suggest that setting a single value of kappa as "minimally acceptable" (i.e., a criterion value) is not useful in ensuring adequate accuracy of observers. Instead, researchers should use the best estimate of the true baserate of the target behavior and the obtained kappa to estimate the accuracy of observers. Investigators can then compare the estimated accuracy of observers to a preselected criterion level. Guidelines are given for selecting a criterion accuracy level.

Person-centered planning is central to United Kingdom policies regarding the support of people with intellectual disabilities. However, little evidence exists on the impact or cost of introducing person-centered planning. We examined the efficacy, effectiveness, and costs of introducing person-centered planning for 93 people with intellectual disabilities over 2 years across four localities in England. A person-centered plan was successfully developed for 65 people. Little change was apparent prior to introducing person-centered planning. After its introduction, modest positive changes were found in the areas of social networks; contact with family; contact with friends; community-based activities; scheduled day activities; and choice. The direct training and support cost of introducing person-centered planning was $1,202 per participant; indirect costs were negligible.

Sixty-two adults with mental retardation of heterogeneous etiology performed four facial emotion discrimination tasks and two facial nonemotion tasks. Staff members familiar with the participants completed measures of social adjustment (the Socialization and Communication domains of the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales and the Social Performance Survey Schedule). All facial discrimination tasks had very good reliability (internal consistency), but only some of the tasks correlated with measures of social adjustment. Furthermore, no evidence was found that emotion tasks and nonemotion tasks assessed different social constructs. Emotion tasks in which participants were presented with visual emotion stimuli correlated significantly with prosocial behavior, whereas those with verbal emotion stimuli did not.