This paper reviews the history of the placement of mentally retarded students during the first half of this century. In 1900, it was generally assumed that custodial care of feebleminded persons was necessary to protect society. Severely retarded students were regularly excluded from public school attendance. Soon school officials began adopting…

School refusal, as differentiated from both school phobia and truancy, is a term used to denote emotionally-based avoidance of school. To identify factors associated with school refusal, 41 junior high and high school students (including special education school refusers, special education non-refusers, and a comparison group from a regular…

Individual differences in fourth grade students' abilities to profit from experimenter-provided picture adjunct aids on prose recall tasks were examined. It was hypothesized that poor paired associate learners would benefit from picture adjunct aids to a greater extent than good paired associate learners. A secondary aim was to assess the effects…

This article proposes the use of special education knowledge within a general education framework. Research on federal policies to achieve educational equity has shown that special education policies have created elements of an unequal educational system. Rural educators need to move beyond "special education" in rural settings, to address the…

To determine whether high school students can be trained to use maps more effectively, a study examined linkage of feature and event information, the role of individual differences, and the roles of reading ability and preference for dealing with visual information. Subjects were 31 16- to 17-year-old high school students. Experimental and control…

A study was conducted to investigate the peer concepts held by 16 second-grade, 17 fourth-grade, and 17 sixth-grade students. A paired comparisons sociometric procedure was used to obtain children's descriptions of their classmates in the areas of reading, mathematics, drawing, and an athletic skill (running). In addition, the procedure measured…

Cognitive style refers to preferences for, or dominant modes of, information processing. Cognitive styles tend to be bipolar and less value-laden than ability or aptitude measures. Conceptualizations of cognitive style differ in the number of styles and the degree of metacognitive control over them which individuals are presumed to have. The Hill…

A method of graphing multivariate data, called the star plot, is very useful in educational contexts because it provides teachers and guidance counselors with information not present in unsupplemented student achievement data. The utility of the method can be seen in analysis of data from a study of factors related to the problem-solving ability…

Research has characterized Turkish culture as very authoritarian in terms of family attitudes. To determine if any of the cultural differences in authoritarian personality scores are due to differences in language or measuring instruments rather than cultural differences in personaltiy traits, university students from the United States and Turkey…

Some evaluations have concluded that diversion programs for juvenile offenders (programs intended as community-based alternatives to formal justice dispositions) reduce recidivism only among youths with the least serious offense histories. To investigate the relationship of offense history to program effectiveness, three diversion programs were…

This paper reviews the literature on the role of mediating cognitive factors in marital functioning and satisfaction. Types and patterns of causal attributions of distressed and nondistressed couples are compared and the effectiveness of various intervention models is discussed. The materials also discuss the role of unfulfilled expectations as a…

Identification of relevant individual and intervention variables whose interaction affects response to treatment can be used to facilitate favorable outcomes through appropriate client-treatment matching. To provide a preliminary appraisal of this interaction hypothesis by examining the relationship between client and treatment loci of control as…

Despite the importance of activity programs in geriatric long-term care settings, there has been little investigation of the recreational needs, wants, and interests of male residents. A descriptive interview survey, which assessed self-reported leisure interests, time preference, and morale was given to 102 staff members and 55 male residents of…

A multivariate correlational study examined interrelationships among personal and contextual variables and early childhood administrators' willingness to implement computer technology. A total of 80 administrators of programs in the state of Illinois with a licensed capacity of 80 or more participated in the study. Dependent variables included…

This paper argues for an interdisciplinary approach to beliefs about language learning research, and suggests that current studies in this area do not go far enough to examine the extent to which stable factors, such as individual learner differences, account for the nature of beliefs. Next, it elucidates how cognitive and personality psychology…