One size doesn't fit all: Full inclusion and individual differences

Recent studies have documented the increasing trend among school districts toward adopting full inclusion as the predominant model for serving students who qualify for special education services. Although these data may suggest that a paradigm shift has already taken place and that a consensus of opinion has been achieved, several organizations representing students with specific disabilities continue to support a continuum of placement options. This paper challenges a one size fits all approach to special education, and highlights the importance of considering the individual characteristics of students. The relevance of research on full inclusion, as well as methodological issues that limit generalizability of findings related to student outcomes, are discussed. The radical perspective of full inclusion is rejected in favor of an approach that emphasizes the complexities of placement decisions.     

Reaction time measurement errors resulting from the use of CRT displays

Three sources of potential error in reaction time measurement may occur when raster scan CRT displays are used to present stimuli: phosphor persistence, sweep delay, or transmission delay. For most applications, only the third source of error is likely to be significant.     

The prediction of delinquency: a correlation between a measure of personality and classroom behaviour

In a study of (N = 120) children exhibiting classroom behaviour problems, a significant correlation was found between the ‘criminal propensity’ (‘C’ score) of a self-report questionnaire and the ‘delinquency predictor’ (‘DP’ score) of a teacher-administered questionnaire. Since the delinquency predictor score has previously been found to be a reliable predictor of later delinquency, the criminal propensity score appears to be worthy of further study.     

Problems in assessment of vividness and control of imagery.

Difficulties in assessing individual differences in vividness and control of mental imagery hinder understanding of the role of of imagery in various phenomena. This study examined the relationships among the Gordon test of imagery control, the Betts questionnaire on imagery vividness, and a research questionnaire on control of imagery developed for this study. The research questionnaire demonstrated satisfactory internal consistency and scores were more widely distributed than were those on the Gordon test. Correlations among the instruments ranged from .47 to .57, suggesting that vividness and control of imagery are not clearly differentiated in practice. Discussion of these results suggests that further empirical work is needed to establish the differential validity of the two constructs.     

Diagnosing children's writing disabilities: different tests give different results

Writing problems are common in children with clinical disorders. However, there are significant intra-individual differences between the ability to spell words, construct sentences, and compose text. Therefore, achievement tests measuring different writing skills may not be consistent in identifying children who have these various writing disabilities. Our study compared scores on the Woodcock-Johnson Written Language subtests (which measure the ability to produce single words and single sentences) with scores on the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test Written Expression subtest (which assesses compositional writing skills) in 54 children referred by their teachers to a school psychologist for writing problems. The Woodcock-Johnson only identified 35% of children as having significant writing problems, whereas the Wechsler test identified 78%. Our study suggests that the latter is more likely than the Woodcock-Johnson to identify students who have problems in compositional writing.     

The wane of childhood amnesia for autobiographical and public event memories

We modified Bruce, Dolan, and Phillips-Grant's (2000) threshold procedure for determining the wane of childhood amnesia. In two experiments, undergraduates labelled childhood events (e.g., your first permanent tooth came in) as know or recollect memories and estimated their age at the event's occurrence. In both studies the estimated transition from mostly know memories to mostly recollect memories was roughly 4.7 years. This transition estimate was replicated in a sample of adults (ages 24-65 years) with both Bruce et al.'s event-generation task and the Experiment 1a questionnaire. By contrast, in two experiments a transition estimate of roughly 6 years was found for undergraduates' memories of public events (e.g., the Challenger explosion). The wane of childhood amnesia appears to occur around 4.7 years.