Although a general understanding of the phenomenon of giftedness is evident in the literature, missing is a body of information on the thoughts and actions of gifted persons in those situations that we suspect influence the emergence of extraordinary accomplishment. In this article I propose a change in direction for the study of the advanced…

The paper argues that educators of the gifted have overlooked important evidence on the power of special environments because of our habit of considering cognitive outcomes and an outsider view of evidence as the standard for judging the benefits of special environments. The author proposes that social context be used as a construct to help…

In this article, the author talks about functional electrical stimulation in children and adolescents with cerebral palsy. Functional electrical stimulation (FES) is defined as the electrical stimulation of muscles that have impaired motor control, in order to produce a contraction to obtain functionally useful movement. It was first proposed in…

The authors are pleased with commentators' willingness to respond to their target article's challenge to identify observable reproducible phenomena that could be widely accepted as strong scientific evidence for innate talent. In this reply, the authors have organized the ideas in the commentaries into three general categories, namely the…

The author discusses some of his experiences during the 13 years he has taught handicapped infants to swim. Lessons are usually given for a 10-minute period daily and progress is recorded on a swimming behavior chart. (PHR)

A number of measurement and design issues that are critical to the use of multiple baseline procedures in evaluating instructional interventions with mentally retarded persons are highlighted. (For related information, see EC 122 157.) (Author/CL)

The author reviews the accomplishments of the five Learning Disability (LD) Institutes and cites several failings, including lack of longitudinal studies and low level of cooperation among institutes. Successes are seen to include information on the nature and complexity of LD and on important variables in pupils' academic and social success.…

The need to reconsider functional ability as a basis for grouping clients in residential settings is emphasized. The effects of this strategy on caregiving practices for the profoundly and severely handicapped are shown to be deleterious in a study of four dimensions of caretaking. (Author/CL)

Twenty-four children (8 to 9 years old) who reversed letters were randomly assigned to either the control or experimental group (15 additional minutes of laterality training per day for 4 weeks). Analysis of results demonstrated that training did not significantly affect the number of reversals. (Author/CL)

An evaluation of the "Percentage of Nonoverlapping Data" approach for quantifying outcomes of single-subject research in special education reveals that it is potentially too sensitive to atypical baseline data, not powerful enough to discriminate important treatment differences, and adversely affected by even subtle trends in the data.…

The response to a critique of a proposed method of quantifying outcomes of single-subject research in special education suggests that the alternative procedure proposed has theoretical but not practical merit due to the limited number of observations typically found in single-subject baselines. (Author/DB)

The response to a critique of a proposed method of quantitatively synthesizing single subject research in special education reaffirms the authors' view that narrative review procedures are of limited utility without objective standards for evaluating study outcomes. (DB)

The authors refute attempts to reject modality based instruction for reading disabled students. They suggest that although no incontestible evidence justifies modality based instruction, further research on the issue should be conducted. J. Kampworth responds by emphasizing the lack of conclusive data. (CL)

For many years Larry Coleman created and ran programs for gifted children, studied the great (and not so great) works in the field of gifted studies, then quietly went about conducting studies that became watermarks in the field. His work on stigma of giftedness, the cognitive map of expertise of a single teacher of gifted children, the importance…

Believes extra attention must be focused on language and cultural differences in preparing Individualized Educational Programs. Reports observations from working with Spanish speaking exceptional children in Costa Rica. Describes pilot study conducted to attempt to discover problems associated with administration of Wechsler Intelligence Scale for…