Whatever happened to those with borderline IQs?

Persons with IQs between one and two standard deviations below the mean constitute a group that has long been ignored by researchers in mental retardation and by programs aimed at assisting developmentally disabled people. This group used to be considered as having "borderline retardation," but these people have since become decertified. A study of 20 young adults whose IQs fell within the former borderline range was conducted to examine how they fared during the transitional year after leaving high school. Most expressed serious concerns for the future as they drifted between jobs and educational programs. More research is needed to identify the special problems of this group and devise appropriate intervention strategies.

Perceptions of communication, cohesion, and adaptability in families of adolescents with and without learning handicaps

Adaptability, cohesion, and communication patterns were studied in 30 families of learning-handicapped adolescents and 30 families of nonhandicapped adolescents. Parent and adolescent perspectives on each of these variables were solicited. The results indicated that adolescents in each of these groups had similar perspectives on adaptability, cohesion, and communication. The parents of the learning-handicapped adolescents, however, felt that their families were less cohesive and had lower levels of communication about problems than did their offspring. When levels of communication were related to adaptability and cohesion, it was evident for both groups that the families with high reported cohesiveness had the most positive communication patterns. Additionally, adolescents rated their families higher on communication if they also perceived a greater amount of flexibility in adaptation.

Use of active sorting and retrieval strategies as a facilitator of recall, clustering, and sorting by EMR and nonretarded children

The ability of 60 EMR and 60 nonretarded children to acquire and retain a sorting and retrieval strategy designed to be facilitative of recall and clustering was examined. All subjects were given a baseline task and, based on their performance, were assigned to one of three groups: experimental, practice, and control. The experimental group received a multi-session training procedure that consisted of instructing the subjects to arrange the stimuli in conceptual arrays, to name individual stimuli and the superordinates to which the stimuli belong, and to count the number of stimuli in each superordinate. The practice group was presented with the same stimuli but received no training. The control group received only the baseline and criterion measures. Analyses of data showed superior performance by the experimental group on measures of short- and long-term recall, clustering, and sorting.