Responding to disruptive or troubled pupils with emotional and behavioural difficulties (EBD) remains a highly topical issue. The challenges these children present relate to wider issues of continuing political concern: the perceived declining discipline in schools; school and social exclusion; the limits to inclusion for children with special…

Recent advances in neuroscience show clearly how experience can change brain neurochemicals, and how this in turn affects the way the brain functions. As a result, early negative events actually get built into the growing brain's neurochemistry, altering the brain's architecture. Research is continuing to investigate how children with genetic…

In this study the "neural efficiency" phenomenon (more efficient brain function in brighter as compared to less intelligent individuals) was investigated regarding differences in intelligence (average vs. above-average intelligence) and scholastic achievement (achievers vs. underachievers). The cortical activation (assessed by…

Teenagers are perplexing, intriguing, and spirited creatures. In an attempt to discover the secrets to their thoughts and actions, parents have tried talking, cajoling, and begging them for answers. The result has usually been just more confusion. Light is being shed on these mysterious young adults. What was once thought to be hormones run amuck…

A project investigated the use of instant photography for creating synthesis between image and language, between pictures and words and thus stimulating the right-brain learning of students. By 1983 over 1 million students (including the learning disabled and hearing impaired) across the United States and Canada had participated in the project,…

Inasmuch as blacks and other ethnic minorities have not been included in normative studies of most neuropsychological tests, the validity of these measures with these populations is questionable. The present study examined the suitability of selected neuropsychological test norms with 100 "normal" (Mean Wechsler Intelligence Scale for…

According to recent neurolinguistic theories and research, language and other analytic functions are located on the left side of the brain, while spatial and configurational abilities are located on the right side. However, there is some evidence that while learning a language requires the use of both hemispheres of the brain, the right hemisphere…

The study sought to determine whether children with unilateral cerebral lesions sustained either prenatally or postnatally suffer from deficts in learning and memory skills and whether these differentiate left-sided from right-sided lesions. The subjects, 69 children ranging in age from 6 to 17 were divided into four patient groups: hemoplegic Ss…

Using current right brain/left brain research, this paper develops a model that explains acting's underlying quality--the actor is both himself and the character. Part 1 presents (1) the background of the right brain/left brain theory, (2) studies showing that propositional communication is a left hemisphere function while affective communication…

While neuropsychology relates the neural structures damaged in traumatic brain injury with their cognitive functions in daily life, this report reviews evidence that elementary operations of cognition as defined by cognitive studies are the level at which the brain localizes its computations. Orienting of visual attention is used as a model task.…

A clinical psychologist describes an approach she uses to assess learning disabled students. She explains that brain function is analyzed through a sequence of tasks charting visual and auditory discrimination, perception, memory, organization, integration, and output. An example is cited in which an 11 year old child with traumatic brain injury…

Various communication studies have revealed the existence of a "preverbal" stage of communication consisting of centers within the brain that exists in an innate form or a form preprogrammed for future information acquired from the environment through experience (socialization). Such centers serve to prepare the individual for…

Studies in psychology, language, and foreign language suggest that it is the qualitative nature of the task students perform while learning that is important, because of the creativity factor. Some explanations of creativity are concerned with hemisphericity of the brain. Another explanation is that creativity results from divergent rather than…

This study examines the influence of selected performance factors and social role participation upon Piagetian cognitive funcitoning during the aging years. By administering a battery of concrete and formal reasoning tasks and measures of fluid intelligence, the effects of varying instructional set and age of E on the cognitive performance of 80…

Article discussed some educational implications of hemispheric lateralization of the human brain. (Editor/RK)