Background: The social inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities presents a major challenge to services. As part of a 12-year follow up of people resettled from long-stay hospitals, the size of 213 individuals' social networks and the types of social support they received were investigated, as viewed by people with intellectual…

Children with Down syndrome are at an increased risk for engaging in challenging behaviour that may be part of a behavioural phenotype characteristic of Down syndrome. The methodology of applied behaviour analysis has been demonstrated effective with a wide range of challenging behaviours, across various disabilities. Applications to children with…

Teacher warmth and support, say University of Virginia researchers Bridget Hamre and Robert Pianta, have unparalleled power to help children adjust and achieve. Their 2005 study of 910 first-grade students included 5- and 6-year-olds whose mothers had low-level education and children identified with "significant behavior, social, and/or…

Using a longitudinal, large-scale sample of British twins, we addressed the prediction of both cognitive abilities and behavioral adjustment from eight domains of environmental risk: minority status, socio-economic status, maternal medical factors, twin medical factors, maternal depression, chaos within the home environment, and parental feelings…

This chapter examines how a particular strategy for analyzing evaluation data, intent-to-treat (ITT) analyses, may underestimate the true effects of interventions. Such underestimation of intervention effects can profoundly influence policies for prevention and treatment of children's mental health problems, which can in turn lead to negative…

A meta-analytic study on effectiveness of behavioral and psychotherapeutic treatments for challenging behaviors in individuals with mild mental retardation is reported. Eighty articles were examined. For each comparison, several study variables and two effect sizes (percentage of nonoverlapping data--PND and percentage of zero data--PZD) were…

This study examined the dynamic relationships between child, parenting, and family-related predictor variables and early childhood externalising behaviour problems. A community sample of 395 Australian children was followed longitudinally, and assessed at 4 and 6 years with the Child Behavior Checklist, Teacher Report Form, and standard measures…

The purpose of this article is to summarize information presented in the prior articles into practical strategies physical educators can use when teaching children with autism. The authors divided the article into three areas: (1) structuring the environment; (2) accommodating communication challenges; and (3) preventing challenging behaviors.…

When interventions with youth are not successful, it is easy to point fingers of blame. Professionals may see parents as uninvolved while parents feel unsupported. Such polarization leads to adversarial relationships that undermine parenting, education, and treatment. This article considers common defensive reactions of parents and professionals…

Social escape behavior is a common behavioral feature of individuals with fragile X syndrome (fraX). In this observational study, we examined the effect of antecedent social and performance demands on problem behaviors in four conditions: face-to-face interview, silent reading, oral reading and a singing task. Results showed that problem behaviors…

The purpose of this study was to implement differentiated and peer-mediated instruction to determine if these instructional interventions were successful in preparing students with disabilities for state standardized tests. In addition, this study identified how exceptional needs learners responded to techniques utilized during differentiated and…

Objective: This case-based, mixed-methods study was undertaken to understand the perspectives and mental health needs of rural children exposed to parental methamphetamine abuse. Method: Participants were 23 children involved with a state child protective agency because of parental methamphetamine abuse. A semistructured interview provided…

Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS) is a curriculum designed to promote social and emotional thinking in primary aged pupils. Research in the US has indicated that where used there has been an increase in emotional understanding and a decrease in behavioural difficulties. This study relates to 287 children (114 from intervention…

Using a large longitudinal representative community sample, this study identified three groups of subjects who were depressed either in pre-adolescence, late adolescence or early adulthood, and matched by age and gender to controls without depression. The 90th percentile on one or two self-reported symptom scales [i. e. the Center for…

Behavioural and emotional problems occur more frequently in children with learning problems than in a cross-section of the general population, both at home and at school. While behaviour problems reportedly are a key obstructive factor impeding inclusive education, children with both behavioural and learning disabilities carry a high risk of…