Developmental-disabilities Books

Mental Retardation: Nature, Cause and Management is an easy-to-read review of the many issues and concerns related to mental retardation. Educators, mental health providers, residential program staff, health care providers, administrators, policy-makers, and students are offered a wealth of information related to avariety of topics, including: etiology, impact of MR on individual psychosocial functioning and personality, history and nature of support services for persons with MR, MR & sexuality, and dual diagnosis.

Baroff summarizes the relevant research from a variety of disciplines ranging from the genetics and biology to linguistics, psychology, and education. He also provides detailed descriptions of common services, programs, and practical dilemmas encountered by persons with MR and the people who care for them. The 50-page bibliography is, in itself, an important resource.

Joseph Palombo's Nonverbal Learning Disabilities: A Clinical Perspective covers a disorder which impairs a person's ability to perceive and understand nonverbal signs. This lack of perception affects everything from behavior patterns and social interactions to personality and affects individuals across all realms of life. Current neurobehavioral research draws together the latest findings on NLD in a book that serves as both an overview of the condition and as a guide to therapies and development.

As a former special education student, my transition to adulthood has had it's own bumps. Myself (and the parents) were previously considering ourselves fairly well-informed in disability self-advocacy. And we were when compared against the 'listen to the experts' mentality apparently pervading our town.

But we had been ironically unprepared for the proverbial gap which I would face when graduating special ed and then college--and those levels of disability support services. We had no inkling of what services were now available and accessible out in the real world for people with disabilities or the process to begin aquiring any of it.

The book talks about other populations (offenders, foster care recipients)who are also sheltered until adulthood. But for me, the most pertinent and powerful chapters--are those dealing with special education services.


Part of the problem is the societal tendency to want to treat people with disabilities as being 'perpetual children' who do not grow up--while having to paradoxically concede that at 21 (at the latest) they do become ineligible for receipt of those special education program services. Society does not want to make effective plans for the aging of people with disabilities. So it simply dumps us when forced to confront our legally and physically becoming an adult--if not always intellectually or emotionally.

"Where do we go from here" can be an often confusing process with an apparently contradictory and/or blurry 'roadmap' to navigate! And even people who had self-advocated in prior environments find ourselves having to force coordination among apparently separate organizations. Welcome to the Real World!

This book would be powerful and essential reading for practitioners in special education and public policy. It also needs to be read by families, including special education students themselves.

An excellent book. One of the best I have read on the subject. Very well written, easy to understand. Good suggestions for parents and teachers. Every teacher should read this book! Every parent should read this book! Every school trustee should read this book! It should be a book studied in a compulsory course at teachers college since we get unidentified learning disabled students in our classes and we are really not prepared. Dyslexia is an invisible handicap and unfortunately few teachers are qualified to recognise this LD. Your site is very useful because I am the founder and the president of a non profit association for french parents of children with dyslexia and I am always looking for information on dyslexia (high school teacher since 1974) Our daughter has dyslexia. She was tested by 8 different specialists and none mentioned dyslexia. They all said she was gifted, she would grow out of it, she was lazy... this ruined her self-esteeme. Was finally diagnosed at 13. Did multi-sensory method with her. Now she is doing great.

The Kauai study of children born in 1955 is famous. These investigators bring to life the enormous amount of data that they have gathered, since that time. They also propose changes in the way we raise our children, based on their data.

This is an excellent resource for clinicians working in early intervention. Good diagnostic and treatment information with this population in mind. I was able to put the ideas into practice easily with a great response from the families. I recommend this to anyone working in Early Intervention or thinking about starting.

Dr. Griffith makes what sounds like a tedious subject read like a fun afternoon of smiles and a few "aha" experiences that verify what you knew but didn't know how to say. But, more than that, once you go back to work the next day and are working with mentally retarded people, it becomes increasingly clear that what he had to say really works. Amazing since it wasn't even billed as a self help book. He has cut through the usual psycho jargon and talks to the reader in a personal and often amusing manner. Even when he is talking about such topics as controversial as aversive conditioning, he explains it clearly. Never again shall I have to wonder about positive and negative reinforcement; now I just implement his concepts of carrots and sticks. It certainly makes my life easier. In fact, the book is so helpful that we on the Board of Directors of a Non-Profit Organization which provides residential/therapeutic services for convicted sex offenders who are developmentally disabled (mentally retarded), have provided a book to each of our staff members. It is a relief to hear their responses as they read it and say that many of their questions have been answered. I had thought that it would be necessary to devise a test to verify that they read the book, but so far that has not been necessary. They are actually thanking us for the information and saying that they are enjoying reading the book and finding it immediately implementable. Thus, this book for me and the staff whom I work with, has served as a pleasant means of updating our knowledge and providing more meaningful service to the residents. As for those whom Dr. Griffith writes about, they are progressing as we understand more of their prospective on life. It is good to become more enlightened regarding their thought processes. As a bonus, our community is a safer place in which to live as we work more effectively with those developmentally disabled who have sexually assaulted and reside in our residential facilities. I have focused on my personal experience with this book (since the only experience I seem to have is personal), but I expect that those who live with, work with, or play with the developmentally disabled will welcome this clearly written book which offers practicality and opens the door to the world of the "professionals" in the field as well as to the world of those who think differently than some of the rest of us. (And that was my favorite chapter, when I began to understand more fully that I too could be considered deficient in my thinking capacity if our society were to measure intelligence based on other criteria than those now used.) That chapter in and of itself made it worth while for us to supply this book to all of our staff. It is a bargain.

Over 2 years ago we found out our adopted son (was our nephew) has Fetal Alcohol Effects. He is the child of a cocaine couple. Though Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is the closest medical diagnosis, it does not quite describe him.

This book with the contrast it draws between Poly Drug Effected Children and Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is exactly what we are living.

Anyone who has this horrible outcome in their day - to - day lives that needs a deeper understanding of their situation absolutely needs this book. We have shared it with a few professionals who have agreed it is a terrific resource.

It is also the most recently released book we have found and in this area of medical research the most recent is the absolute best.

We highly recommend this book!

This book is very well written and really brings to life the complexity of the youth's lives. A must read.

I was surprised to find that no one had written a review about this book. I know it has been used as a recommended textbook at the University of Pittsburgh in Deaf Education and Educational Psychology, and it was recommended to me by at least four professors. This may constitute part of the problem in deaf and special education, and regular education in public schools for deaf and hearing impaired children. The little amount of research that is being done by people like Marc Marschark, who is a genius in my opinion, is not filtering down to those who need to use this information in making sure that equal opportunity to education is available to these children, no matter what environment they are placed in.

I specifically went to read what Marschark has written about intelligence, memory, and attention in deaf children. Since I am totally deaf, I recognize some of the problems that arise when a child is presented with nothing but verbal/oral material in a learning situation. Marschark did more research than he needed to or others would have done, and he pulls all the research together to make a comprehensible whole. The references he provides in this book are valuable for referring back to and reading on their own, since he places them in context. This book was published in 1993, and I really think an update is needed because neuroscience has found out some significant information over the last few years that apply to teaching and understanding the workings of the mind in the presence of deafness or hearing loss. For example, it has been shown that prelingually-deafened adults use their auditory cortex when lipreading or using American Sign Language. This indicates a rewiring of the brain which occurs in children whose deafness is caught early enough to use manual language with or teach lipreading skills to. This information could be vitally important in teaching those with hearing loss, and also be used to pressure Congress to demand that all newborns be tested for hearing loss prior to leaving the hospital. The importance of determining hearing loss early is mandatory to providing these children with educational opportunities early enough to make up for their diversity (I refuse to call it a disability when the Deaf community does not recognize it as such).

Marschark writes well. The book is immensely readable. He also provides enough information to show that deafness does not equate with lack of intelligence, for which I am supremely thankful. Karen Sadler, Science Education, University of Pittsburgh