Veridical and false pictorial recognition were assessed in individuals with mental retardation; groups were matched for MA and CA. Pictures were viewed in either a generative or static format at acquisition. The individuals with mental retardation and those in the MA-matched group had higher rates of false memories for critical items and lower hit rates than did their CA-matched peers. The mental retardation group demonstrated an acquiescent response bias (i.e., high novel false-alarm rate). When data were corrected for this bias, those with mental retardation had significantly lower hit rates but equivalent false-alarm rates to the MA-matched participants. Results are discussed in terms of pictorial distinctiveness and within the frameworks of activation monitoring and fuzzy trace theory.
The role of Special Olympics in the lives of mothers of adult athletes was examined. Forty-six mothers participated in a longitudinal study, completing a parenting stress questionnaire, a measure of their child's maladaptive behavior, and a survey of athlete involvement in Special Olympics at two time periods, 42 months apart. Results confirm that involvement in Special Olympics is negatively correlated with mothers' role restriction, isolation, depression, and problems with competence and attachment. Involvement in Special Olympics fully mediated the effect of child social maladjustment on maternal role restriction and depression and partially mediated its effect on maternal problems with competence. Taken together, these findings suggest that Special Olympics can function as a formal support for mothers.
Thirty-six women with mental retardation were divided into two groups on the basis of whether they had a documented history of abuse during the preceding 5 years. The women with this history were more likely than the women with no documented history of abuse to be employing passive/avoidant decision-making strategies, reporting higher levels of stress, having dual diagnoses, be receiving counseling, and relying on others to go out into the community. We recommend that special attention be paid to designing interventions that are tailored to the specific needs of these women.
In a matched-groups design, costs and quality of life outcomes for adults with intellectual disabilities with relatively low support needs were compared between those in fully staffed group homes (n = 35) and in semi-independent living (n = 35). Data were collected on participant characteristics, setting organization, various lifestyle outcomes, and costs. There were no differences in the majority of lifestyle outcome measures. Fully staffed participants had better outcomes in money management and some health indicators. Semi-independent living participants had better outcomes for choice and community activities undertaken without staff support. Costs for semi-independent living were less. On balance, semi-independent living could offer certain cost-effective lifestyle advantages provided that sufficient attention is given to health, living, and financial well-being.
The AAIDD has promulgated various models of adaptive behavior, including its 1992 model stressing 10 adaptive skills and its 2002 model that highlighted three conceptual domains. In previous studies on the Adaptive Behavior Assessment System-II (ABAS-II), researchers found support for a model including both 10 adaptive skills and three conceptual domains. To extend this review, we examined gender-invariant structure of adaptive behavior using the ABAS-II Parent Form, Ages 5-21, to answer four questions: Do the skill areas in this measure display the same pattern of factor loadings and the same factor loadings? Are intercepts of the observed skill areas equal? Do skill areas measure the corresponding factors with the same accuracy? Results show a similar one-factor structure for males and females.
There has been limited research on the role of sociocognitive factors in depression with people who have a mild intellectual disability. However, an association has been found between negative social comparison and depressed mood. We extend previous work by including individuals with clinical depression. A between-groups design of 18 depressed versus 18 nondepressed participants was used. Depression measures were administered, along with measures of self-esteem and social comparison. Participants reported the salience of the social comparisons they made. Depressed participants reported significantly more negative social comparisons; the nondepressed group reported that the positive comparisons they made were more salient. These results have implications for cognitive behavior interventions and the possibility of working with people in the context of their interpersonal beliefs.
We investigated the association between indicators of subjective well-being and the personal characteristics, socioeconomic position, and social relationships of a sample of 1,273 English adults with intellectual disabilities. Mean overall happiness with life was 71% of the scale maximum, a figure only marginally lower than typically reported among the general population. Variation in subjective well-being was strongly and consistently related to indicators of socioeconomic position and, to a lesser extent, social relationships. For women, being single was associated with greater well-being on all indicators. For men, there was no association between marital status and well-being. Relationships with friends who also had intellectual disabilities appeared to be protective against feeling helpless.
The analysis of the early development of self-injurious behavior (SIB) has, to date, reflected the wider distinction between nature and nurture. Despite the status of genetic factors as risk markers for the later development of SIB, a model that accounts for their influence on early behavior-environment relations is lacking. In the current paper we argue that the investigation of gene-environment interactions (GxE) and other forms of gene-environment interplay could potentially enhance current approaches to the study of self-injury. A conceptual model of the early development of SIB based explicitly on such relations is presented. The model is consistent with the basic tenets of functional analysis. Implications for research and the assessment, treatment, and prevention of SIB are discussed.
Convergences and divergences between four of the most commonly used checklists for psychiatric disorders (the Reiss Screen, The Mini PAS-ADD, the DASH-II, and the ADD) were examined. We screened 181 individuals with intellectual disability for psychiatric disorders with the four checklists and compared the results on the checklists. The concordance of the overall scores on the four checklists was high; but the agreement on specific psychiatric disorders was limited. The results indicate that the checklists are useful as general indicators of psychiatric disorders, but are of less value for specifying the nature of the disorders in individuals with intellectual disability.
The interrater reliability of the Supports Intensity Scale (SIS) was investigated under the condition that interviewers had to have been trained and/or experienced in its administration and scoring. Both corrected and noncorrected Pearson's product-moment coefficients were generated to assess interinterviewer, interrespondent, and mixed interrater reliability. The correlation coefficients for the SIS Support Needs Index Score and SIS subscale scores were considerably higher than coefficients reported in the SIS Users Manual that were derived from a similar study conducted with untrained, inexperienced interviewers.
To examine visual and verbal coding strategies, I asked children with intellectual disabilities and peers matched for MA and CA to perform picture memory span tasks with phonologically similar, visually similar, long, or nonsimilar named items. The CA group showed effects consistent with advanced verbal memory coding (phonological similarity and word length effects). Neither the intellectual disabilities nor MA groups showed evidence for memory coding strategies. However, children in these groups with MAs above 6 years showed significant visual similarity and word length effects, broadly consistent with an intermediate stage of dual visual and verbal coding. These results suggest that developmental progressions in memory coding strategies are independent of intellectual disabilities status and consistent with MA.
Autism is currently viewed as a spectrum condition that includes strikingly different severity levels; IQ is consistently described as one of the primary aspects of the heterogeneity in autism. To investigate the possibility of more than one distinct subtype of autism based on IQ both latent class analysis and taxometrics methods were used to classify Mullen IQs in a sample of 456 children with autism spectrum disorder. We found evidence for multiple IQbased subgroups using both methods. Groups differed in level of intellectual functioning and patterns of verbal versus nonverbal ability. Results support the notion of distinct subtypes of autism that differ in severity of intellectual ability, patterns of cognitive strengths and weaknesses, and severity of autism symptoms.
A randomized controlled trial was used to evaluate a parent training intervention for caregivers with preschool-age children with developmental disabilities. The 21 families in the experimental group received usual care plus the 12-week Incredible Years Parent Training Program with developmental delay modifications. Families in the control group (n = 23) received usual care, including early childhood education and related services. Results suggest that this parent training intervention was superior to usual care for young children with developmental delays or disabilities in reducing negative parent-child interactions and child behavior problems. Participants in the experimental group indicated high satisfaction with treatment. Additional research is necessary to document maintenance and generalization of treatment outcomes.
Compulsive, self-injurious, and autistic behaviors were examined in 31 boys and 29 girls with fragile X syndrome aged 5 to 20 years. Self-injurious behavior occurred in 58% of boys and 17% of girls, whereas compulsive behavior occurred in 72% of boys and 55% of girls and did not appear to be associated with self-injurious behavior. Fifty percent of boys and 20% of girls met diagnostic criteria for autism on the ADOS-G. Girls who showed compulsive behavior had lower levels of FMRP than girls who did not show compulsive behavior, and boys with autistic symptoms had lowered levels of cortisol. Taken together, these data suggest that autistic and compulsive behaviors are highly prevalent in fragile X syndrome and that lowered levels of FMRP and cortisol may be biological markers for these behaviors.
Some individuals with Prader-Willi syndrome exhibit strengths in solving jigsaw puzzles. We compared visuospatial ability and jigsaw puzzle performance and strategies of 26 persons with Prader-Willi syndrome and 26 MA-matched typically developing controls. Individuals with Prader-Willi syndrome relied on piece shape. Those in the control group used a different, picture-focused strategy. Individuals with Prader-Willi syndrome performed better than did the control group on an achromatic interlocking puzzle, whereas scores on puzzles with pictures (interlocking or noninterlocking) did not differ. Visuospatial scores related to performance on all puzzles in the control group and on the noninterlocking puzzle in the Prader-Willi syndrome group. The most proficient jigsaw puzzlers with Prader-Willi syndrome tended to be older and have shape-based strategies.
Face processing and facial expression recognition was investigated in 17 adults with Down syndrome, and results were compared with those of a child control group matched for receptive vocabulary. On the tasks involving faces without emotional content, the adults with Down syndrome performed significantly worse than did the controls. However, their performance was good on the tests with complete faces. On the facial expression tasks, participants with Down syndrome exhibited particular difficulties with the neutral and surprised expressions. Analysis of their error pattern suggest they had a tendency to judge faces more positively than did the controls. Finally, there were significant relationships among emotional processing, receptive vocabulary, and inhibition measures; nonverbal reasoning ability was not related to any of the tasks.
Signaling noncomprehension of the spoken messages of others was examined for youth with fragile X or Down syndrome in comparison with each other and nonverbal MA-matched typically developing children. A direction-following task was used in which some of the directions were inadequate. Both syndrome groups signaled noncomprehension less often than did the typically developing children. The ability to signal noncomprehension appropriately was related to a measure of receptive vocabulary and syntax. Preliminary analyses indicated that males with fragile X syndrome signaled noncomprehension less often than did their female peers, even after controlling for differences in nonverbal MA.
Multiple aspects of memory were examined in 42 boys with fragile X syndrome and a comparison group of 42 typically developing boys matched on MA. Working memory, incidental memory, and deliberate memory were assessed with a battery that included both free-recall and recognition tasks. Findings indicated that boys with fragile X syndrome performed more poorly than their matches on most measures. The exception was free recall, in which their accuracy was equal to that of the control participants. Results from analyses of a subset of boys with fragile X syndrome who exhibit characteristics of autism and their MA matches, though preliminary, support the conclusion that memory deficits are especially marked in boys who have fragile X syndrome and evidence autistic behaviors.
A mixed method approach was used to explore quality of life of 101 mothers of children with fragile X syndrome. Mothers completed a self-report of personal quality of life and measures of mental health and well-being. A subset was interviewed about quality of life. The distribution of scores on the Quality of Life Inventory was similar to the norms, indicating that these mothers do not, as a whole, report a lower quality of life than does the average woman. Significant predictors of quality of life were trait hope and parenting stress. The most common positive factor was being a mother. However, they also indicated that parenting a child with fragile X presented challenges and stressors, primarily when the social environment was not supportive.
Although often described as temperamentally "easy" and sociable, children with Down syndrome also exhibit behavior problems. Affective development is important for social and behavioral competence. We examined negative affective expressions and a range of emotion regulation/coping strategies during a frustrating task in a sample of children with Down syndrome, nonspecific mental retardation, and typical development. Results revealed that children with Down syndrome displayed significantly more frustration and more orienting to the experimenter without asking for help. Typical children used more goal-directed strategies, including assistance-seeking and cognitive self-soothing. Findings suggest that children with Down syndrome may use a limited repertoire of strategies for coping with frustration. Suggestions for future intervention studies are provided.
