Recently, in the area of learning disabilities, a subarea of special educa tion, an interesting development has become discernible. This develop ment centers on the increasing focus of learning disabilities professionals on theory building and empirical research, and it is reflected in the spate of books currently being published. With their clear emphasis on con ceptual and methodological issues along with directions for future re search, these newly published books differ essentially from the bulk of learning disabilities textbooks. They include S. Vaughn and C. Bos (Eds. ), Research in...

The field of education is under pressure, both external and internal, to improve the services provided to all students. In American society, and elsewhere, there is a concern that current educational practices fail to adequately prepare many students to be productive citizens. There has been a call for educational services that are more responsive to the needs of students, that use effective educational practices, that involve parents and the local community, and that adequately prepare teachers to assume more professional roles. Over the last several decades special educators have addressed...

More than 10 years ago, with funding from the Connecticut State Depart ment of Education and the encouragement of its consultant on early child hood special education, Virginia Volk, we began our studies offamilies of infants who were hospitalized on the newborn intensive care unit of the John Dempsey Hospital located at the University of Connecticut Health Center. BettyJo McGrade, Deborah Allen, and Maria McQueeney played pivotal roles in the early years ofthis research program. Additional funding from the National March of Dimes Foundation, the University of Con necticut Research...

"Ecobehavioral analysis," the merging of social ecological studies and J.R. Kantor's theory of interbehavioral psychology, was termed just over a decade ago. Since then, innovative trends emerging in the field of developmental disabilities warrant a comprehensive update. Ecobehavioral Analysis and Developmental Disabilities The Twenty-First Century offers such an update of current research, as Dr. Stephen Schroeder compiles the work of twenty-one noted authorities in this volume. Each contributor discusses his/her research on a personal level, providing fresh insights into...

In late 1985, The President's Committee on Mental Retardation (PCMR) spon sored a National Strategy Conference on Mental Retardation and Mental Health in Washington, D.C. The purpose of this conference was to bring together our nation's leadership in the fields of mental retardation and mental health in order to delineate the state of the art relative to the diagnosis, care, and treatment of citizens with mental retardation/mental illness, as well as to chart a national course for the support and integration of citizens with these challenging needs into the confluence of family and community...

The thinking that began this book arose out of some dissatisfaction with the rela tively simplified, unidimensional model of development, which seems to have come to dominate the fields that address the needs of atypically developing chil dren. It seemed impossible to us that developmental differences could explain the range of learning and coping styles we have seen and read about in children iden tified as mentally retarded, slow learning, learning disabled, nonhandicapped, and gifted. If a typical model of development did not account for what children with handicaps to learning could do,...

As a graduate student a decade ago, I recall vividly reading the inaugural issue of the Journal of Behavioral Medicine when it appeared in 1978. Its purpose was described as "a broadly conceived interdisciplinary publication devoted to fur thering our understanding of physical health and illness through knowledge and techniques of behavioral science: ' The articles in that first issue addressed such topics as the biofeedback treatment of neuromuscular disorders, anxiety manage ment of Type A behavior, and premorbid psychological factors related to cancer incidence. At that time, coursework in...

DEVELOPMENT OF NON-LINGUISTIC COMMUNICATION SKILLS, which presents the results of research accomplished through the joint sponsorship of the SonomaDevelopment Center (SDS) and the College of Education of Florida Atlantic University (FAU), examines the development of prelanguage and nonlingu- istic skills in individuals with various types and degrees of developmental disabilities. Utilizing the dichotomies that may exist betweencommunication and language, the book explores communication skills rather than formal language systems acquisition.

When you look at the advances in the field of mental retardation over the past 30 years, it is hard to imagine that more change is inevitable. Yet, I think back to the time when, early in his presidency, President Kennedy called together the brightest scientists, researchers, doctors, and educators to develop a comprehensive plan for the nation to effectively care for, treat, educate, and house persons with mental retardation. In the early 1960s the call for new research into the causes and the amelioration of mental retardation, the development of community-based programs, and the...

The management of and attitudes toward children and adults with Down syndrome have undergone considerable changes in the course of the condi tion's long history (Zellweger, 1977, 1981, Zellweger & Patil, 1987). J. E. D. Esquirol (1838) and E. Seguin (1846) were probably the first physicians to witness the condition without using currently accepted diagnostic designa tions. Seguin coined the terms furfuraceus or lowland cretinism in contradis tinction to the goiterous cretinism endemic at that time in the Swiss Alps. Esquirol, as well as Seguin, had a positive attitude toward persons who were...