“You Have to Sit and Explain it All,and Explain Yourself.” Mothers’ Experiences of Support Services for Their Offspring with a Rare Genetic Intellectual Disability Syndrome

The experiences of mothers of adult offspring with Angelman, Cornelia de Lange, or Cri du Chat syndrome have not been previously explored in research. The current study focuses on experiences with social and medical services and the impact the rareness of an adult offspring’s syndrome has on the experiences of mothers. Eight mothers of adults with Angelman, Cornelia de Lange, or Cri du Chat syndrome were interviewed. Thematic Content Analysis was used to interpret the interviews. Four themes emerged from the analysis: (i) The rarity of their offspring’s syndrome, (ii) Uneven medical and social care service provision, (iii) The inertia of social care services, and (iv) Mothers as advocates. Mothers felt that the rareness of their offspring’s syndrome did not affect experiences with social care services, but did affect access to medical services and some aspects of day-to-day living. Accessing appropriate social care services was reported to be a lengthy and complex process. These data may help inform care service providers about how best to support adults with rare genetic syndromes and their families.     

The dimensions of change in therapeutic community treatment instrument

In this article, the authors describe the refinement and preliminary evaluation of the Dimensions of Change in Therapeutic Community Treatment Instrument (DCI), a measure of treatment process. In Study 1, a 99-item DCI, administered to a cross-sectional sample of substance abuse clients (N = 990), was shortened to 54 items on the basis of results from confirmatory factor analyses and item response theory invariance tests. In Study 2, confirmatory factor analyses of the 54-item DCI, completed by a longitudinal cohort of 993 clients, established and validated an 8-factor solution across 2 subpopulations (adults and adolescents) and 2 time points (treatment entry and 30-days postentry). The results of the 2 studies are encouraging and support use of the 54-item DCI as a tool to measure treatment process.     

A privileged and exemplar resource: traumatic avoidance learning and the early triumph of mathematical psychology

The relationship between a classic 1953 study by R. L. Solomon and L.C. Wynne on traumatic avoidance learning adn the pioneering efforts by Robert Bush and Frederick Mosteller and others to develop mathematical models of learning is analyzed. The main purpose is to explore how Bush and Mosteller disembedded a carefully selected set of Solomon and Wynne's data from its original context, which allowed something as seemingly humble as a set of numbers to become a widely available and valuable resource for the newly emerging field of mathematical learning theory (MLT). The creative use that the MLT community made of these data once Bush and Mosteller had systematically reduced the empirical and conceptual uncertainties within Solomon and Wynne's study is also discussed.     

Habitual Prospective Memory and Aging: Remembering Intentions and Forgetting Actions

Routine or habitual prospective memory tasks (e.g., taking medication) have the potential for creating confusions regarding whether or not an action has already been performed. We developed a laboratory paradigm for examining the kinds of processes thought to be operating in these kinds of tasks. Younger and older participants were asked to perform an action once and only once on each of 11 trials. The results showed that age and divided attention contributed to both omission and repetition errors. This new paradigm reveals memory failures in a habitual prospective memory task, and the results demonstrate that older adults are particularly susceptible to these memory problems.     

The status of training in school psychology and trends toward the future

A nation-wide survey was conducted in 1979 to collect information on graduate training in school psychology, including areas of program emphasis and the structure of field training and supervision. Results indicated that the vast majority of programs remain committed to emphasizing the direct service triad of psychoeducational assessment, school consultation, and behavioral intervention, but that two indirect service areas—research and program planning and evaluation—are gaining in training emphasis. It was also found that a very high percentage of programs employ a comprehensive practicum and internship experence, that most placements are in the public schools, and that considerable time is allotted for supervision.     

Memory checklists: A method of teaching functional skills to brain-damaged adults

Three head-injured clients had difficulty performing vocational tasks and routine activities of daily living. Memory checklists, which consisted of a task analysis for each activity, were introduced. All three clients were immediately able to perform the tasks.     

Developmental patterns in priming and familiarity in explicit recollection

Developmental trajectories of two classes of human memory, implicit and explicit memory, appear to diverge. We examined how developmental differences in perceptual and conceptual priming, two types of implicit memory, coincide with differences between familiarity and recollective responses on explicit memory tests that employ the Remember/Know paradigm ( Tulving, 1985 ). Both types of priming were characterized by developmental invariance in 52 children and adolescents ages 8-19 years. Contrary to Komatsu, Naito, and Fuke (1996) results, few age-group differences in perceptual priming were observed following a levels-of-processing encoding manipulation. In contrast, age group differences were found for "Remember" but not "Know" responses. Neither levels of awareness nor strategies influenced priming. Adult levels of performance appear earlier in development on perceptual and conceptual priming tests compared to explicit memory tests. Similar developmental dissociations exist between explicit and implicit memory performance as between "Remember" and "Know" recollective responses.     

Applications of gene targeting technology to mental retardation and developmental disability research

The human and mouse genome projects elucidated the sequence and position map of innumerous genes expressed in the central nervous system (CNS), advancing our ability to manipulate these sequences and create models to investigate regulation of gene expression and function. In this article, we reviewed gene targeting methodologies with emphasis on applications to CNS development and neurodevelopmental disorders.