Jerry Fodor has argued that the multiple realizability argument, as discussed in his original “Special Sciences” article, “refutes psychophysical reductionism once and for all.” I argue that his argument in “Special Sciences” does no such thing. Furthermore, if one endorses the physicalism that most supporters of the “Special Sciences” view endorse, special science laws must be reducible, in pr...

The outcome of a due process hearing between parents and a school district concerning a child's special education program rarely draws the attention of anyone beyond the parties to that dispute. The resulting decision of the hearing officer similarly impacts only the parties to the dispute, without extending to other parents and school districts seeking an adjudication to resolve their disagree...

The fields of special education/early intervention and infant mental health are moving closer, as practitioners find common ground in understanding and intervening to support vulnerable infants and toddlers. The importance of the impact of relationships on all developmental domains has been brought to the foreground. This includes relationships between parent and interventionist, as well as par...

Educational outcomes were evaluated for 2,046 preschool children identified with developmental delay. Results indicated that at third grade, 26% were in regular education and the remaining 74% were receiving special education services. The most common disability classifications at outcome were specific learning disabilities and educable mentally handicaps. Regular education, but not special edu...

The authors analyzed the results of a social validation survey to determine if autism service providers including special education teachers, parents, and administrators demonstrate a preference for the intervention components of Applied Behavior Analysis or Training and Education of Autistic and other Communication Handicapped Children. They also investigated the comprehensiveness of these tre...

Self-estimates of intelligence (SEI), which influence to what extent people engage in and how well they perform at a task, are subject to distortion. Here, the distortion effects of individual differences in intelligence (IQ), gender, and proximal (with reference to test performance) and distal (with reference to IQ score distributions) assessments of SEI were tested in a sample of 200 British ...

Expert educators continuously evaluate their students’ performance, adapting instructional programs to be as effective as possible for each child. This paper considers the information educators need to make these adaptations. The term educator refers here to professionals along the whole cascade of teaching services, from general classroom teachers, to learning specialists in smaller reading or...

BACKGROUND Individuals with disabilities experience higher rates of abuse than the nondisabled. Few evidence-based prevention interventions have been published despite a need for such work. This study evaluated IMPACT Ability, a safety and self-advocacy training for individuals with cognitive and/or physical disabilities. METHODS A quasi-experimental design was used to assess change in safe...

Panorama(BBC1 March 23) did nothing to dispel the myths and fears that surround Ashworth, Broadmoor and Rampton special hospitals. Neither Ashworth nor Broadmoor had an opportunity to put their case on the programme, maybe because they disagreed with what the programme was trying to establish.

Student performance in mathematics has been linked to the mathematical knowledge of the teacher. Based on this finding, a 5-day professional development module was created to improve teachers’ mathematical knowledge and their understanding of number sense. We found no difference prior to the professional development in mathematical content knowledge for teaching mathematics (CKTM) between speci...