Language in mental retardation: Individual and syndromic differences, and neurogenetic variation 1Based on a keynote presentation at the Third European Conference on Psychological Theory and Research in Mental Retardation, Geneva, September 1st, 2000.

2001 ◽  
Vol 60 (3) ◽  
pp. 161-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean A. Rondal
Keyword(s):  
Mental Retardation ◽  
Language Development ◽  
Oral Language ◽  
Psychological Theory ◽  
Genetic Syndromes ◽  
Explanatory Variables ◽  
Keynote Presentation ◽  
Genetic Origins ◽  
The Sixties ◽  
The Individual

Predominantly non-etiological conceptions have dominated the field of mental retardation (MR) since the discovery of the genetic etiology of Down syndrome (DS) in the sixties. However, contemporary approaches are becoming more etiologically oriented. Important differences across MR syndromes of genetic origin are being documented, particularly in the cognition and language domains, differences not explicable in terms of psychometric level, motivation, or other dimensions. This paper highlights the major difficulties observed in the oral language development of individuals with genetic syndromes of mental retardation. The extent of inter- and within-syndrome variability are evaluated. Possible brain underpinnings of the behavioural differences are envisaged. Cases of atypically favourable language development in MR individuals are also summarized and explanatory variables discussed. It is suggested that differences in brain architectures, originating in neurological development and having genetic origins, may largely explain the syndromic as well as the individual within-syndrome variability documented. Lastly, the major implications of the above points for current debates about modularity and developmental connectionism are spelt out.

IMF Stabilization Programs, Policy Conduct and Macroeconomic Outcomes: A Case Study of Pakistan

2006 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-62
Author(s):  
Nawaz A. Hakro ◽  
Wadho Waqar Ahmed
Keyword(s):  
Current Account ◽  
Inflation Rate ◽  
Current Account Balance ◽  
Macroeconomic Policies ◽  
Explanatory Variables ◽  
Fiscal Balance ◽  
Macroeconomic Impacts ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Imf

This study is designed to assess the macroeconomic performance of fund-supported programs, and the sequencing and ordering of macroeconomic policies in the context of the Pakistan economy. The generalized evaluation estimator technique has been used to assess the macroeconomic impacts of the IMF supported programs. GDP growth, inflation rate, current account balance, fiscal balance and unemployment are used as the target variables in order to gauge economic performance during the program years. The vector of policy variables (that might have been adopted in the absence of programs) and the vector of foreign exogenous variables are also taken as explanatory variables in the model, so that the individual effect of the IMF supported programs could be assessed. The result suggests that as the IMF prescriptions were applied, the current account balance has worsened, the unemployment rate has significantly increased, and the inflation rate has increased during the years of fund-supported programs. Only the budget balance has shown signs of improvement. Furthermore an inadequate sequencing of reforms has contributed to the further worsening of the economic scenario during the program period.

Syntactic Development in the Oral Language of Learning Disabled and Normal Students at the Intermediate and Secondary Level

1983 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rochelle B. Simms ◽  
W. Donald Crump
Keyword(s):  
Language Development ◽  
Oral Language ◽  
Secondary Level ◽  
Learning Disabled ◽  
Oral Language Development ◽  
Normally Achieving ◽  
Density Score ◽  
Crucial Component ◽  
Syntactic Development ◽  
Two Indices

Syntax is a crucial component of oral language development. Frequently, learning disabled children's oral language development is characterized by syntax problems. Hence, since deviations in oral language development may form the basis for identification of learning disabilities, adequate indices of oral language development are needed. The purpose of this study was to explore two indices of syntactic development in oral language, the T-unit and the Syntactic Density Score. Learning disabled students and a matched group of normally achieving peers were compared on these indices at four age levels. Results are reported for each measure along with a discussion and implications.

scholarly journals Does Mother Know Best? Maternal Knowledge Calibration Predicts Children’s Oral Language Development

2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashley M. Pinkham ◽  
Tanya Kaefer ◽  
Susan B. Neuman
Keyword(s):  
Language Development ◽  
Oral Language ◽  
Domain Knowledge ◽  
Picture Book ◽  
Child Outcomes ◽  
Vocabulary Knowledge ◽  
Maternal Knowledge ◽  
Language Outcomes ◽  
Transmission Of Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Calibration

For young children, maternal testimony is an important source of knowledge. Research suggests that children privilege assertions expressed with certainty; however, adults frequently overestimate their knowledge, which may lead them to express certainty about incorrect information. This study addressed three questions. (1) To what extent do mothers convey domain knowledge when talking to their kindergartners? (2) Do mothers successfully calibrate their knowledge during these conversations? (3) Does mothers’ knowledge calibration predict their children’s language outcomes? Forty-nine mother-child dyads read a picture book about a familiar domain. Mothers’ assertions of domain knowledge were coded for accuracy and expressed certainty. Results revealed that mothers tended to overestimate their knowledge. Knowledge calibration accuracy positively predicted child outcomes. Successful calibration was associated with stronger vocabulary knowledge and listening comprehension, whereas poor knowledge calibration was associated with weaker child outcomes. Knowledge calibration may be a crucial factor in the successful transmission of knowledge during mother-child conversations and impact children’s language development.

Canadian and American Religion Redux: Revisiting America’s Religious Exceptionalism and Persistence Compared to Canada

2021 ◽  
pp. 000842982110042
Author(s):  
Alastair Hay
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Research ◽  
Religious Affiliation ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Religious Culture ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Sixties ◽  
Religious Lives ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Welfare State

Two core lines of argument presently define our understanding of why Christianity’s historical influence continues to persist in the lives of Americans to a degree not observed in Canada (despite the recent loss of religious affiliation in both countries). These are: 1) changes in the functional dominance of social systems (i.e. shifts to the welfare state in Canada) and 2) important foundational, cultural differences between Canada and America. Using a historiographic approach (coupled with quantitative research conducted in Canada and the US), this article argues that one less well-recognized factor also deserves our attention: Charles Taylor’s observation that American religious culture was primed for the Age of Authenticity. In this article I argue that Taylor was probably right. Over and above the well-established individualistic character of the religious lives of Americans is a related, but important, additional effect—the sanctioning of the ‘this-worldly’ potential of the individual life from within its religious institutions. It is this aspect of America’s religious exceptionalism, I argue, that has also helped to render the religious lives of Americans less vulnerable to – but not immune from – the watershed effects of the sixties compared to Christianity in Canada.

History and Systems of Critical Psychology

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Teo
Keyword(s):  
Psychological Theory ◽  
Critical Psychology ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Strong Basis ◽  
Psychological Practice ◽  
The Status ◽  
Critical Approaches ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Many Sources ◽  
The Relationship

Critical psychology comprises a broad range of international approaches centered around theories and practices of critique, power, resistance, and alternatives of practice. Although critical psychology had an axial age in and around the 1970s, many sources can be found decades and even centuries earlier. Critical psychology is not only about the critique of psychology, which is a broader historical and theoretical field, but about doing justice in and through theory, justice with and to groups of people, and justice to the reality of society, history, and culture as they powerfully constitute subjectivity, as well as the discipline and profession of psychology. Doing justice in and through psychological theory has a strong basis in Western critical approaches, representing a privileged position of reflection in Euro-American research institutions. Critical psychologists argue that traditional psychology is missing its subject matter and hence is not doing justice in methodology, and its practices of control and adjustment are not doing justice to the emancipatory possibilities of human agency or human science. Critical psychologists who are attempting to do justice with and to human beings are not neglecting the onto-epistemic-ethical domain, but are instead focusing on people, often marginalized or oppressed groups. Critical psychologists who want to do justice in history, culture, and society have argued that traditional psychological practice means adaption and adjustment. This means that not only subjectivity, but also the discipline and profession of psychology need to be connected with contexts. Psychologists have attempted to conceptualize the relationship between society and the individual, as well as the ability of humans not only to adapt to an environment but to change their living conditions and transform the status quo. This conceptualization also means providing concrete analyses of how current society, based in neoliberal capitalism, not only impacts individuals but also the discipline of psychology. Despite the complexities of critical psychology around the world, critical psychologists emphasize the importance of reflexivity and praxis when it comes to changing the conditions of social reality that create mental life. Given that subjectivity cannot be limited to intra-psychological processes, critical psychologists attend to relational and structural societal realities, requiring inter- and transdisciplinarity in the discipline and profession.

Correctional Rehabilitation and Human Functioning: An Embodied, Embedded, and Enactive Approach

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Harry Dent
Keyword(s):  
Psychological Theory ◽  
Treatment Utility ◽  
Enactive Approach ◽  
Human Functioning ◽  
The World ◽  
Correctional Rehabilitation ◽  
Risk Need Responsivity ◽  
Level I ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Adaptive Relationship

<p>In order for correctional rehabilitation practices to be maximally effective, they should be grounded in well-developed psychological theory about the causes, development, and nature of crime. This thesis argues that these theories of crime should be based in an underlying perspective of human functioning, or how people work at a fundamental level. I argue that this level of theory has been neglected in theories of crime, as demonstrated through an evaluation of the Risk-Need-Responsivity model of rehabilitation, which currently stands as the most popular and widely used rehabilitation framework throughout much of the world. This perspective is understood to implicitly present a view of functioning which is reward-oriented, multifactorial, norm-based, and modular, resulting in limited explanatory value and diminished treatment efficacy. I then suggest an alternative model of functioning as being embodied, embedded, and enactive (3e). 3e places an emphasis on the individual as an embodied whole, in an adaptive relationship with their physical and social environment. 3e prioritises the affective experience and agency of the individual, with a commitment to viewing the person as a functional whole drawing on comprehensive multilevel explanations. I outline how this perspective could be used to inform the explanation of crime, before applying the model to an exemplar to demonstrate the potential treatment utility of a 3e approach to correctional rehabilitation, as opposed to an RNR approach.</p>

A Case of Trisomy 8

1974 ◽  
Vol 23 (S1) ◽  
pp. 253-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Dallapiccola ◽  
P. E. Gallenga ◽  
A. Pinca ◽  
L. Capra
Keyword(s):  
Mental Retardation ◽  
Cardiovascular System ◽  
Congenital Malformations ◽  
The Other ◽  
Trisomy 13 ◽  
Heat Denaturation ◽  
Retinal Vessels ◽  
Trisomy 8 ◽  
Ocular Lesions ◽  
The Individual

A case of 8 trisomy syndrome, identified on the basis of the heat denaturation technique, has been detected in a patient with mental retardation, congenital malformations, and peculiar ocular anomalies. This observation confirms that, even without evidence of mosaicism, this chromosome does not seriously upset the viability of cells and could be less deleterious to the individual than trisomy 13, 18, or 21.The mental development is not too much impaired and the skeletal abnormalities are mild, as compared to those found in previously reported cases. On the other hand, the cardiovascular system is involved and the ocular lesions are complex. They include prominent eyes, epicanthus, hypertelorism, antimongoloid slant of palpebral fissures, ectopia of lacrimal point, megalocornea, enlarged iridocorneal angle, subatrophic papilla, tortuosities of retinal vessels, absence of deep perception.

Living single: A phenomenological study of a group of South African single women

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 390-408 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elmien Lesch ◽  
Alberta SJ van der Watt
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Romantic Relationship ◽  
Developmental Psychology ◽  
Phenomenological Study ◽  
Psychological Theory ◽  
African Women ◽  
Developmental Task ◽  
Phenomenological Perspective ◽  
The Individual ◽  
South African Women

Worldwide, societies continue to privilege the ideology of couplehood to the detriment of other relationship states, like singlehood, that are steadily increasing in number. Furthermore, according to developmental psychology theory, the formation of a committed romantic relationship is viewed as an important psychosocial developmental task in adulthood. It is therefore not surprising that women’s experience of being single has generally been neglected by psychological theory and research. Situated in a feminist-phenomenological perspective, this study explored the experiences of tertiary-educated, child-free, never-married, White, South African women between the ages of 30 and 40. Giorgi’s descriptive-phenomenological method was used to analyse the individual interview data. In this article, we discuss four of the prominent themes that best reflect the collective views and multi-faceted experiences of the participants: singlehood brings both freedom and loneliness; career as both fulfilment and singlehood coping mechanism; committed partners as sources of both restriction and connection; and hoping for a committed relationship. We highlight how the notion of a committed sexual relationship as the ultimate relationship that provides effortless connectedness and companionship underpins all of these themes. We argue that alternative discourses and mechanisms of connection that accommodate people who live as single adults, should be fostered.

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