Background: It is not known whether those with co-morbid fragile X syndrome (FXS) and autism represent a distinct subtype of FXS; whether the especially severe cognitive delays seen in studies of young children with co-morbid FXS and autism compared with those with only FXS continue into adolescence and young adulthood; and whether autism in those…

Exploratory behaviors of Down Syndrome and nondelayed young children between the mental ages of 16 and 32 months were examined in four situations in which they tried to find things which they saw reflected in a mirror. Down Syndrome and nondelayed children differed in number, type, and frequency of exploratory behaviors. (PCB)

The study found low to moderate correlations between cognitive and play measures for over 200 preschool children classified as mildly retarded, moderately retarded, borderline, and language disordered. Retarded and borderline groups achieved similar mental ages on both measures while language disordered and atypical groups demonstrated marked…

The British picture vocabulary scales (BPVS-II) and the Leiter international performance scales (Leiter-R), both restandardised in 1997, are often used in experimental studies to match individuals with intellectual impairment. Both provide a brief measure of mental age, and cover a wide ability range using a simple format. The BPVS-II assesses…

Standard false belief tasks indicate that normally developing children do not fully develop a theory of mind until the age of 4 years and that children with autism have an impaired theory of mind. Recent evidence, however, suggests that children as young as 3 years of age understand that thought bubbles depict mental representations and that these…

Sattler's standard deviation technique for interpreting strengths and weaknesses on the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale has been simplified by Kaufman and Waterstreet in the form of an easy-to-use table. A refinement of their table is presented, with an example to demonstrate its use. (Author/CTM)

Sought to establish a valid computer measurement technique for educational assessment applications. Similarities and differences in performance on visual discrimination tasks for young children of normal development and adolescents with severe mental retardation were analyzed using multiple testing procedures. Found differences in the two groups…

Elementary school students (N=29) with a mean age of 7.96 years who were referred for gifted evaluation in an affluent suburban school district in Western Pennsylvania were administered the Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test and the WISC-III. Discusses findings, limitations and implications of the study. (KW)

Tested prefrontal and hippocampal functions in school-aged individuals with Down syndrome (DS) compared functions with those of typically developing children individually matched on mental age. Found that hippocampal and prefrontal composite scores contributed unique variance to the prediction of mental age and adaptive behavior. Noted a…

This study with 12 elementary school children with mild mental retardationship found that the relation between lexical knowledge and mental age depended upon the nature of the vocabulary test. Results suggested that mental age in this population was more strongly related to knowledge of abstract relational terms than to knowledge of labels for…

The limited literature on awareness of differences and stigma in people with intellectual disabilities is largely sociological, emphasises pathology, and has rarely used a developmental perspective with representative samples. Interviews, photographs and standardised tests were used to investigate such awareness with 77 young adults with Down…

Overselective stimulus control was assessed in 29 students at residential schools for individuals with developmental disabilities. Overselectivity testing included three different delayed identity matching-to-sample tasks. Sample stimuli for the Form/Color Test were nine possible combinations of three colors and three forms. On each trial, the S+…

Background: This study describes a new caregiver-report assessment, the Sensory Experiences Questionnaire (SEQ), and explicates the nature of sensory patterns of hyper- and hyporesponsiveness, their prevalence, and developmental correlates in autism relative to comparison groups. Method: Caregivers of 258 children in five diagnostic groups…

A series of item analyses of the Concept Assessment Kit Conservation (Goldschmid) conducted for a sample of educable mentally retarded children showed that the probability of a correct response differed from task to task. Evidence indicated that the order of difficulty of the tasks resembled that for nonretarded children. (Author)

Thirty young children with handicaps were assessed on five self-recognition mirror tasks. The set of tasks formed a reproducible scale, indicating that these tasks are an appropriate measure of self-recognition in this population. Data analysis suggested that stage of self-recognition is positively and significantly related to cognitive…