Developmental-disabilities Books

no annecdotal nonsense here. Dr Bauman a Harvard neurologist who has studied the brains of those with autism for years. Her voluminous research dispels the causal myths of autism. Her evidence shows that the assault to the primitive brain affecting the limbic system and cerebellum manifesting as autism happens prenatally.

An elusive and complex disorder is how autism is presented in this book. That's absolutely right, but I don't think this book even begins to give a clue as to the nature of autism. I think the approach has a lot to be desired: We have to assume that the nervous system evolved in order to gratify basic drives. In higher animals, basic drives are refined into emotions. So, what do the neurobiologists say? According to them, autism is a neurobiological problem, but not an emotional one! That's worse than just getting things bass-ackwards. It's being stubbornly reductionist and deliberately obtuse.

Lots of information all in one place! Tables are great, however some technical terms are used without giving their definitions. For a higher education learner. None the less, great information on drugs that have been and are prescribed for people with disabilites and their side effects.

This book, entitled "The International Consensus Handbook" is an excellent text for detailing the history and research of the use of psychotropic drugs in the mentally retarded/developmentally disabled population. While some may not agree with the consensus on every type of drug; there is no other textbook devoted to this population that is so informative. And indeed, as research continues this text will be slightly more out of date every day as new medications and use of meds changes. However, this text has become a major reference for my didactic programs on psychotropics within a long term care facility for the developmentally disabled. Nurse Educator Tacachale: A Community of Excellence

This book inspires me some ideas for activity design. The group procedure described inside also provides me a more fluent and efficient teatment session.

This book inspires me some ideas for activity design. The group procedure described inside also provides me a more fluent and efficient teatment session.

Rory Hoy gives a glimpse inside the thoughts and emotions of someone with autism. He resides in the UK and has made many short films prior to this one. My 12 year old son who is high functioning also was impressed and wants to learn how to make a movie too, although his would be on cats and not himself.

Rory compares normal people as those with divided attention while autistic peoople have 'single attention'. Rory also covered how he had to be taught to wave back to someone when they wave at you and shared how distracting it can be when trying to cross a street with the loud noises.

He suggests that people say things the way they really mean them. Rory assumes it must have been hard for his parents, but noted they always understood him. In the random thoughts section Rory tells of being scared of dogs, likes to smell things and likes to listen to music to block out odd thoughts.

A good book that showcases someone on the spectrum dealing with life the best way they can and sharing those experiences so others can learn a little bit about autism.

As a local family support council member, I was interested in what was happening across the nation in regards to family support. Items such as states that had passed legislation with or without funding attached, copies of surveys used to gather information regarding family support status provided some good insight. Thanks for writing this book.

This text, which has a foreward by Russell Barkley, Ph.D., provides an overview of the disorder, assessment procedures and treatment recommendations. Too many times those who deal with children with this disorder (parents, teachers, ect.)are left without knowledge or techniques to assist the student. In that "pills don't teach skills" this book provides concrete assistance to the clinician, teacher and parent.

The cognitive behavioral approach to this disorder and others have yet to achieve their maximum potential.

I had heard about this book from a Learning Disability conference. I find that the forms and the way in which it is written is very helpful for working with children with Autism.

The book was in pretty good condition. There was a bend in the cornor of the cover. Besides that I got a great price for the book. It was like new. Received it quickly.

What do psychologists think will happen if a child grows up deprived of intellectual and social stimulation, has to use a restricted linguistic code that is unknown to the local majority culture, and appears to be stupid? What if the child is aware of failing many mysterious `tests', faces unemployment as an adult and is beset by do-gooders who demand concessions from society rather than encourage realistic forms of achievement? Jeffrey Braden is an honest psychologist who admits he started out with the usual prejudices of guilt-ridden Whites about how racial differences in intelligence and attainment arise. Fortunately, he was propelled into realistic empirical endeavour by his appreciation that research on the deaf might bring home the firm evidence for social-environmentalist ideology that studies of Black people themselves had failed to deliver. Now, following his substantial record of academic publication (in the journals 'Personality & Individual Differences' and 'Intelligence'), Braden's 'Deafness, Deprivation and IQ' surveys 324 psychometric investigations of deaf children and adults and supplies a scholarly conclusion of great practical and political importance.

In addition to the usual problems of `minorities', the deaf in the West carry special handicaps. Many of them suffered maternal rubella (12%), pregnancy complications or premature births (7%), and childhood meningitis (7%). Their physical (15%) and `cognitive-behavioural' (21%) problems reflect a high rate of medical trauma. In childhood, many had awesome family problems of incomprehension and impatience with their deafness. Unlike other minorities, most deaf people did not even have parents, siblings or playmates who shared their fate; and their only serious means of communication (signing) reinforced their social isolation. Facing the political tasks of adulthood, the deaf even lack a dominant, affluent group that they can unitedly blame for their historical position and milk for compensatory funding and `positive' discrimination. On conventional Verbal IQ (VIQ) tests, the deaf score at around 86; and levels of educational attainment are still lower . However, scores are higher with testing procedures that use both signing and speech; Performance IQ (PIQ) tests give a mean IQ of 97 - rising to 100 on motor-intensive tests that require the least verbal mediation; and the tiny proportion of deaf people who have two deaf parents (and markedly fewer medical problems - presumably being merely `genetically deaf') are 8 IQ points higher still. This grossly handicapped minority thus has essentially normal general intelligence and a Verbal-Performance discrepancy that is a mirror-image of Afro-American results. Moreover, whereas what especially defies environmentalist interpretation is the big Black deficit on Performance scales, there is no such problem with the big deaf deficit on Verbal scales: while degree of hearing impairment provides no prediction of PIQ deficit (r = -.05), its strong negative link with VIQ (r = -.50 ) is just the kind of thing that common-sense environmentalism can explain. Could it even be that PIQ is artificially boosted in the deaf - in some kind of compensation for their handicap? As amongst Black children, degree of provision for spatial and constructive play bears little relation to PIQ; and parents notoriously stop deaf children playing in order to make them concentrate on language. Anyhow, the notion of intelligence developing in compensation for a handicap has no conspicuous applicability to other minorities. Braden's thorough consideration of such explanatory options is impressive and persuasive. According to the Israeli educationalist, Reuven Feuerstein, Black children lack `mediated learning experience' (MLE) since their parents are inhibited from passing on Black culture; yet deaf children suffer no corresponding PIQ handicap despite their own parents being largely unable as well as quite often unwilling to serve as the `cultural mediators' that Feuerstein's theory requires. As Braden says (p. 191), MLE theorists have "emphasized the primary impact of MLE on intellectual development"; by contrast, across the wide range of past studies of the deaf, "heritability approaches could account for all of the major findings if minor allowances were tolerated".

As a bonus, Braden's investigations are also relevant to the newly re-opened question of how intelligence, personality and achievement may `differentiate' into more distinct dimensions at higher levels of general intelligence ('g'), Mental Age or IQ - as originally observed by the British psychologists Charles Spearman and Sir Cyril Burt and the American psychologist Henry Garrett. Time and again, the psychometric properties of IQ-type tests turn out to be normal in deaf samples - apart from the lower Verbal mean. By no conspicuous criterion are mental tests inappropriate for the deaf - any more than for Black people. The deaf are not qualitatively different from the hearing in how different types of mental tests correlate, so there is no support for H. R. Myklebust's `organismic shift hypothesis' of special deaf development. However, the lowered correlations among mental tests as higher 'g' levels are reached (through childhood) do seem to appear at a later chronological age in the deaf: recent evidence of Braden's own is that "deaf children lag behind normal-hearing peers in the differentiation of intellective abilities over the age span" (p.91). If it is accepted that the deaf have normal intelligence, this lag implies that differentiation requires development, time and effective application of intelligence as well as just relatively high 'g' itself . It is as if the branching of differentiated, less correlated abilities requires its own history of investment and even `interest accumulation', and not just the immediate availability of good central resources.

Braden's thorough consideration of deprivation makes the issues and relevant methods very clear even at the cost of some repetition of major themes. Here for once is an author who is too modest by half when he says that "the best conclusion from the study....is that it raises many intriguing questions for future research". Braden thoroughly deserves his warm Afterword from California's Emeritus Professor Arthur Jensen. Without this work no library of differential psychology will be complete - especially if a second edition gives it a decent index.

I actually haven't had to use this book very much, so far. At a glance, it seems to be a very good refernce for anybody that is involved or interested in a field that deals with disabilitites.