Mental rotation of letters,pictures, and three-dimensional objects in German dyslexic children

This study examines mental rotation ability in children with developmental dyslexia. Prior investigations have yielded equivocal results that might be due to differences in stimulus material and testing formats employed. Whereas some investigators found dyslexic readers to be impaired in mental rotation, others did not report any performance differences or even superior spatial performance for dyslexia. Here, we report a comparison of mental rotation for letters, three-dimensional figures sensu Shepard and Metzler, and colored pictures of animals or humans in second-grade German dyslexic readers. Findings indicate that dyslexic readers are impaired in mental rotation for all three kinds of stimuli. Effects of general intelligence were controlled. Furthermore, dyslexic children were deficient in other spatial abilities like identifying letters or forms among distracters. These results are discussed with respect to the hypotheses of a developmental dysfunction of the parietal cortex or a subtle anomaly in cerebellar function in dyslexic readers.     

‘I don't want to be the mother of a paedophile’: the perspectives of mothers whose adolescent sons with learning disabilities sexually offend

The subject of sexual abuse is a major focus of professional and public concern. Sexual abuse of (and by) people with learning disabilities evokes even greater disquieting emotions, and makes severe demands on the social services, and the criminal justice system. The aims of the project were: 1) to determine whether group psychotherapy produced effective outcomes for adolescent boys with learning disabilities who exhibit sexually abusive behaviour, 2) to explore the perspectives of parents and other care-givers, and 3) to document the nature and extent of service support to families. This paper focuses solely on the mothers' perspectives. This was a three-year project with six boys (under 16) receiving group psychotherapy, using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Clinical measures were used to track changes throughout the course of psychotherapy. Semi-structured interviews (taped and transcribed) were held (separately) with the boys, their parents, paid care-givers and the therapists. The mothers tried hard to make sense of, and come to terms with, what was happening to their sons and to themselves, they struggled to reconcile their own confused and often conflicting emotions, and to maintain their own sense of identity. They felt almost totally unsupported by the services, both in the past and present, and could see little hope for the future. There is an urgent need for development of effective and sympathetic services for the parents of boys with learning disabilities who have been abused, and who are now showing abusive behaviour.     

A Little Goes a Long Way: The Impact of Distal Social Support on Community Integration and Recovery of Individuals with Psychiatric Disabilities

Although an extensive body of literature highlights the important role of social support for individuals with psychiatric disabilities, definitions of support tend to be restricted—focusing on intimate relationships such as friend and family networks and ignoring the role of casual relationships existing naturally in the community. This mixed-methods study of 300 consumers of mental health services in the Southeastern US aims to better understand the impact of community supports, termed distal supports, on community integration and recovery from mental illness. Qualitative content analysis, tests of group mean differences, and hierarchical linear regression analyses revealed the following: (1) participants primarily reported receiving tangible support (e.g., free medication/discounted goods) from distal supports rather than emotional support (e.g., displays of warmth/affection) or informational support (e.g., provision of advice); (2) women and older participants reported more distal supports than men or younger participants; and (3) distal supports played a unique role in predicting community integration and recovery even after accounting for the influence of traditional support networks. Results highlight the importance of considering diverse types of social support in naturally occurring settings when designing treatment plans and interventions aimed at encouraging community participation and adaptive functioning for individuals with psychiatric disabilities.     

Found Voices:

This article explores the cultural consequences of disability on women. The author interviewed four women with disabilities and two mothers and shares some of her own experiences with disability. The relationship between disability rights and feminism and ethnic identity and the impact of disability on the sense of self and personal goals are considered, as is the transformative power of speaking to the larger culture about how disability experiences inform human perceptions and social practices.     

Women with Physical Disabilities Who Want to Leave Their Partners

Abstract

Four domains of barriers for women with physical disabilities who are considering leaving a partner are outlined. These obstacles include (a) physical needs; (b) financial needs; (c) custody concerns; and (d) relationship issues. Disability policies can have direct bearing on the lives of women with disabilities, and hence on their freedom to choose to remain with or to leave a partner.     

Womanist Therapy with African American Women with Disabilities

Abstract

African American women are at increased risk for disabilities. There is very little information available, however, regarding psychological interventions with African American women with disabilities. The purpose of this article is to discuss psychological intervention in working with African American women with acquired disabilities from a womanist perspective. Themes and interventions will be discussed. Recommendations for working with African American women with disabilities in a therapeutic context will be offered.     

Counselling,autism and the problem of empathy

The experiences of disabled people suggest that ableism insidiously and invasively impacts upon the practice of counselling and related therapies. This article critiques a particular account of psychotherapy with a child with the label of autism to illustrate how ableism can disrupt the process of empathy and negate the therapeutic experience. In so doing the article highlights the inherent difficulties in traversing different epistemic positions to make sufficiently informed readings of counternormative expressions of being. General principles of counselling practice are then proposed to support practitioners with providing effective therapy for all clients.     

Lay concepts of health and illness from a developmental perspective

Abstract

The concepts of children, adolescents and their mothers with regard to different aspects of health and illness in general and five specific diseases were explored in this study. An exploration with fully standardised questions and open answers was subjected to a content analysis. A reliable rating system was developed to score the sophistication of the answers. The study included 99 Ss of the age groups 5, 8, 12 and 16 years, as well as 48 mothers of the children. Many children and adolescents were able to define health positively (well-being) and not merely as the absence of illness. The definition of illness in general was frequently composed of somatic symptoms and disorders, feeling poorly and things one would like to accomplish but can't. The causality explanations of illness in general were dominated by contagion. The concepts of the older children and the mothers were richer, more elaborated, less concrete and less action-oriented than those of the younger children. However, abstract formulations and complex aspects of illness were very rarely expressed. In addition, concepts regarding the characteristics (definition, symptoms, causality, treatment and prevention) of five diseases (cold, measles, heart infarction, cancer and AIDS) were measured. The pattern of results was strongly influenced by age. By and large, the development of most disease concepts was linear with significant differences between age groups. Conversely, within a given age group, significant differences were found in the cognitive level of disease characteristics, either with respect to the same disease or between different diseases (“horizontal shifts”).     

The Contribution of Executive Skills to Reading Comprehension

Although word recognition deficits (WRD) are a known cause of reading comprehension deficits (RCD), other contributions to RCD, including executive function (EF), have not been fully explored. We examined the contribution of EF (working memory and planning), along with attention, decoding, fluency, and vocabulary to reading comprehension in 60 children (including 16 WRD and 10 RCD), ages 9–15 years. After controlling for commonly accepted contributors to reading comprehension (i.e., attention, decoding skills, fluency, and vocabulary), EF continued to make a significant contribution to reading comprehension but not to word recognition skills. These findings highlight the need for consideration of the role of EF in RCD.     

Visual Perception and Memory Impairments in Children at Risk of Nonverbal Learning Disabilities

Visuospatial working memory (VSWM) and visual perception were examined in two groups aged 11–13, one with children displaying symptoms of nonverbal learning disability (NLD) (n = 18) and the other a control group without learning disabilities (n = 18). The two groups were matched for general verbal abilities, age, gender, and socioeconomic level. The children were presented with VSWM tests involving visual and spatial-simultaneous processes, and also with a classical visual illusion, a classical ambiguous figure, as well as visual perception tests specifically devised for the present study. Results revealed that performance of children at risk of NLD was worse than controls in some VSWM and in visual perception tests without memory involvement; these latter required comparisons of visual stimuli and locations in space with distractors. Moreover, the two groups differed in perceiving the classical ambiguous figure. Findings are discussed in the light of both theoretical and clinical implications.