ADHD: a psychological response to an evolving concept. (Report of a Working Party of the British Psychological Society)

The British Psychological Society is the only national organization of psychologists within the United Kingdom representing all aspects of psychology and all subspecialisms within psychology. It is both a learned scientific society and a professional association. To address the concept of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), the Professional Affairs Board of the Society convened a Working Party, consisting of individuals nominated by subsystems of the Society because of their recognized professional and academic expertise. They covered a range of specialisms, including educational, clinical, criminological, neurological, and cognitive psychology. A report by the Working Party was published in September 1996. It had two main aims: first, to outline the research that was relevant to current understanding of the notion of ADHD from an historical, psychological, and biological perspective, and, second, to consider implications for practice in the light of the information obtained. The focus was predominantly on children, although it was recognized that problems could persist into adulthood. The intention was to write a report for professionals that also would be accessible to a wider audience. This article is a highly abridged version of the report. It omits the references to research reviews and research studies contained in the full account. Selected extracts are included in order to justify the conclusions and the recommendations that are made and to inform a North American audience of developments in the United Kingdom.     

Specific Learning Difficulties (Dyslexia): Equal Opportunities Issues

Their article raises important questions concerning the lack of attention to issues of equal opportunity in the literature on specific learning difficulties. The authors identify five objectives for professional practice and research.     

Literacy Difficulties and Single-Case Experimental Design

It is widely agreed that methods for evaluating the persistence of literacy difficulties require further development and research. This paper considers the use of single-case experimental design and reports an intervention study that involves monitoring the learning of eight children. The research examines to what extent the children make progress on the 'probe tests' based on the teaching programmes and, if progress is made, how it is reflected in scores on the Phonological Assessment Battery, British Ability Scale tests of reading and spelling, and the Neale Analysis of Reading Ability. The advantages and pitfalls of single-case experimental design are discussed in the light of this research .     

The effect of scopolamine on reference and working memory in pigeons

A comparison of the effects of scopolamine hydrobromide on working memory and reference memory in White Carneaux pigeons was undertaken by means of a modified delayed matching-to-sample procedure. Performance on working-memory trials was disrupted by decreases in sample duration and intertriai interval and by increases in delay interval. Performance on reference memory trials was not disrupted by any of these parametric manipulations. In Experiment 1, the pigeons received injections of scopolamine hydrobromide (0.01, 0.05, or 0.1 mg/kg), scopolamine methyl bromide (0.1 mg/kg), or saline prior to test sessions. In Experiment 2, the pigeons received injections of scopolamine hydrobromide (0.01 or 0.03 mg/kg), scopolamine methyl bromide (0.03 mg/kg), or saline. In both experiments, scopolamine hydrobromide had greater disruptive effects on working-memory trials than on reference-memory trials. The centrally active form of scopolamine disrupted working-memory trial accuracy more than the peripherally active form. However, no drug dose × delay interval interaction was obtained. Thus, the interference on working-memory-trial accuracy produced by central cholinergic blockade would not appear to be due to alterations in the active maintenance of information during the delay interval.     

First Things First: Developing Academic Competence in the First Year of College*

Perhaps two-thirds of the gains students make in knowledge and cognitive skill development occur in the first 2 years of college (Pascarella, E. T., and Terenzini, P. T. (2005). How college affects students Vol. 2. A third decade of research. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass). A significant proportion of the students entering America’s colleges and universities, however, never make it to their second year at the institution where they began. This study, part of a national effort to transform how colleges and universities think about, package, and present their first year of college, is based on data from nearly 6,700 students and 5,000 faculty members on 30 campuses nationwide. The study identifies the individual, organizational, environmental, programmatic, and policy factors that individually and collectively shape students’ development of academic competence in their first year of college. *Paper presented at the meeting of the Association for Institutional Research, June 6, 2005 San Diego, CA. This study was supported by grants from the Atlantic Philanthropies and the Lumina Foundation for Education to the Policy Center for the First Year of College, Brevard, NC. The opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of those foundations or the Policy Center, and no official endorsement should be inferred.     

Understanding Interdisciplinarity: Curricular and Organizational Features of Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Programs

Though the number of interdisciplinary undergraduate programs has increased rapidly over the past several decades, little empirical research has characterized such programs. In this article we report on our investigation of the characteristics of interdisciplinary programs and develop typologies to describe the multiple ways in which such programs are structured with respect to curricular and organizational features. Using cluster analysis, we show differences in both curricular structures and organizational features across programs, irrespective of the program’s content focus. This typology will guide future research to explore differences in student learning outcomes across the interdisciplinary program types.     

Pedagogical Signals of Faculty Approachability: Factors Shaping Faculty–Student Interaction Outside the Classroom

Decades of research demonstrate that college students benefit from positive interaction with faculty members, although that same evidence suggests that those interactions are far from common, particularly outside the classroom. Moreover, relatively little is known about which, when, how, and why faculty members choose to engage with students outside of the classroom. Guided by the theory that faculty members use in-class behaviors to signal their “psychosocial approachability” for out-of-class interaction with students (Wilson et al. in Sociology of Education 47(1):74–92, 1974; College professors and their impact on students, 1975), this study uses data from 2,845 faculty members on 45 campuses to identify the personal, institutional, and pedagogical factors that influence the frequency and type of interaction faculty members have with students outside of the classroom.     

Pedagogy of Validation: Autobiographical Reading and Writing Courses for First-Year,Low-Income Students

Innovative Higher Education - This embedded case study leveraged Rendón’s (1994) validation theory as well as theories connecting self-reflection and transformative learning (e.g.,...