Handbook of Psychosocial Characteristics of Exceptional Children


Book Description

Research has documented the reciprocal effects of exceptionality and secondary psychosocial and behavioral characteristics. This in-depth handbook examines the categories of exceptionality most often described in educational, behavioral, and health practices. Leading authorities from psychology, education, and medicine evaluate the key characteristics of particular exceptionalities from the vantage point of theory, research, assessment, and intervention.




Future Orientation


Book Description

By contemporary I mean a present with an anticipated future, for we must do our best to overcome clinical habits which make us assume that we have done our part if we have clari?ed the past. (Erikson, 1968, pp. 30–31). The scope of time ahead which in?uences present behavior, and is therefore to be regarded as part of the present life-space, increases during development. This change in time perspective is one of the most fundamental facts of development. Adolescence seems to be a period of particularly deep change in respect to time perspective. (Lewin, 1939, p. 879). I chose to open this book with two excerpts from Erikson’s and Lewin’s writings because they indicate that future orientation has had its deep roots in psychol- ical thinking, and call readers’ attention to the long standing interest in two f- damental issues: the motivational power of constructed future images and their development across age. More speci?cally, Erikson and Lewin’s writings und- score the importance of future thinking for in?uencing present behavior tendencies, and point out that the ability to think about the future and realize the “scope of time ahead” increase with age, and reach a special developmental signi?cance in adolescence.




Assessing Emotional Intelligence


Book Description

Managing human emotions plays a critical role in everyday functioning. After years of lively debate on the significance and validity of its construct, emotional intelligence (EI) has generated a robust body of theories, research studies, and measures. Assessing Emotional Intelligence: Theory, Research, and Applications strengthens this theoretical and evidence base by addressing the most recent advances and emerging possibilities in EI assessment, research, and applications. This volume demonstrates the study and application of EI across disciplines, ranging from psychometrics and neurobiology to education and industry. Assessing Emotional Intelligence carefully critiques the key measurement issues in EI, and leading experts present EI as eminently practical and thoroughly contemporary as they offer the latest findings on: EI instruments, including the EQ-I, MSCEIT, TEIQue, Genos Emotional Intelligence Inventory, and the Assessing Emotions Scale. The role of EI across clinical disorders. Training professionals and staff to apply EI in the workplace. Relationships between EI and educational outcomes. Uses of EI in sports psychology. The cross-cultural relevance of EI. As the contributors to this volume in the Springer Series on Human Exceptionality make clear, these insights and methods hold rich potential for professionals in such fields as social and personality psychology, industrial and organizational psychology, psychiatry, business, and education.




The Consciousness’ Drive


Book Description

What is the uniquely human factor in finding and using information to produce new knowledge? Is there an underlying aspect of our thinking that cannot be imitated by the AI-equipped machines that will increasingly dominate our lives? This book answers these questions, and tells us about our consciousness – its drive or intention in seeking information in the world around us, and how we are able to construct new knowledge from this information. The book is divided into three parts, each with an introduction and a conclusion that relate the theories and models presented to the real-world experience of someone using a search engine. First, Part I defines the exceptionality of human consciousness and its need for new information and how, uniquely among all other species, we frame our interactions with the world. Part II then investigates the problem of finding our real information need during information searches, and how our exceptional ability to frame our interactions with the world blocks us from finding the information we really need. Lastly, Part III details the solution to this framing problem and its operational implications for search engine design for everyone whose objective is the production of new knowledge. In this book, Charles Cole deliberately writes in a conversational style for a broader readership, keeping references to research material to the bare minimum. Replicating the structure of a detective novel, he builds his arguments towards a climax at the end of the book. For our video-game, video-on-demand times, he has visualized the ideas that form the book’s thesis in over 90 original diagrams. And above all, he establishes a link between information need and knowledge production in evolutionary psychology, and thus bases his arguments in our origins as a species: how we humans naturally think, and how we naturally search for new information because our consciousness drives us to need it.




Resilience in Children, Adolescents, and Adults


Book Description

Resilience in Children, Adolescents, and Adults: Translating Research into Practice recognizes the growing need to strengthen the links between theory, assessment, interventions, and outcomes to give resilience a stronger empirical base, resulting in more effective interventions and strength-enhancing practice. This comprehensive volume clarifies core constructs of resilience and links these definitions to effective assessment. Leading researchers and clinicians examine effective scales, questionnaires, and other evaluative tools as well as instructive studies on cultural considerations in resilience, resilience in the context of disaster, and age-appropriate interventions. Key coverage addresses diverse approaches and applications in multiple areas across the lifespan. Among the subject areas covered are: - Perceived self-efficacy and its relationship to resilience. - Resilience and mental health promotion in the schools. - Resilience in childhood disorders. - Critical resources for recovering from stress. - Diversity, ecological, and lifespan issues in resilience. - Exploring resilience through the lens of core self-evaluation. Resilience in Children, Adolescents, and Adults is an important resource for researchers, clinicians and allied professionals, and graduate students in such fields as clinical child, school, and developmental psychology, child and adolescent psychiatry, education, counseling psychology, social work, and pediatrics.




Student Motivation


Book Description

This book presents the latest developments in the major theories of student motivation as well as up-to-date research on the contextual and cultural variables that influence learning motivation in educational settings. An international roster of experts provides ample illustration of the complexities that are revealed when the study of cultural and contextual interactions is combined with motivational and cognitive variables.




Handbook of School-Based Mental Health Promotion


Book Description

The Springer Series on Human Exceptionality Series Editors: Donald H. Saklofske and Moshe Zeidner Handbook for School-Based Mental Health Promotion An Evidence-Informed Framework for Implementation Alan W. Leschied, Donald H. Saklofske, and Gordon L. Flett, Editors This handbook provides a comprehensive overview to implementing effective evidence-based mental health promotion in schools. It addresses issues surrounding the increasing demands on school psychologists and educational and mental health professionals to support and provide improved student well-being, learning, and academic outcomes. The volume explores factors outside the traditional framework of learning that are important in maximizing educational outcomes as well as how students learn to cope with emotional challenges that confront them both during their school years and across the lifespan. Chapters offer robust examples of successful programs and interventions, addressing a range of student issues, including depression, self-harm, social anxiety, high-achiever anxiety, and hidden distress. In addition, chapters explore ways in which mental health and education professionals can implement evidence-informed programs, from the testing and experimental stages to actual use within schools and classrooms. Topics featured in this handbook include: · A Canadian perspective to mental health literacy and teacher preparation. · The relevance of emotional intelligence in the effectiveness of delivering school-based mental health programs. · Intervention programs for reducing self-stigma in children and adolescents. · School-based suicide prevention and intervention. · Mindfulness-based programs in school settings. · Implementing emotional intelligence programs in Australian schools. The Handbook for School-Based Mental Health Promotion is a must-have resource for researchers, clinicians and related professionals, and policymakers as well as graduate students across such interrelated disciplines as child and school psychology, social work, education policy and politics, special and general education, public health, school nursing, occupational therapy, psychiatry, school counseling, and family studies.




Special Education in Contemporary Society


Book Description

2015 Recipient of the Textbook Excellence Award from the Text and Academic Authors Association (TAA) The Sixth Edition of Richard Gargiulo’s well-respected Special Education in Contemporary Society: An Introduction to Exceptionality offers a comprehensive, engaging, and easy-to-read introduction to special education. Grounded in research and updated to reflect the most current thinking and standards of the field, the book provides students with the skills and knowledge to become successful teachers. Richard Gargiulo and new co-author Emily Bouck encourage a deep awareness and understanding of the human side of special education. Their book provides students a rare look into the lives of exceptional students and their families, as well as the teachers that work with exceptional persons throughout their lives. The new edition maintains the broad context and research focus for which the book is known, while expanding on current trends and contemporary issues to better serve both pre-service and in-service teachers of exceptional individuals. The text is organized into two distinct parts to offer students a truly comprehensive and humane understanding of exceptionality. In Part I, readers are provided strong foundational perspective on broad topics that affect all individuals with an exceptionality. In Part II, the authors engage students with thorough examinations of individual exceptionalities, and discuss historical, personal, and educational details of each exceptionality as it affects a person across the lifespan.




Special Education in Contemporary Society


Book Description

Part 1: FOUNDATIONS OF SPECIAL EDUCATION. 1. Special Education in Context: People, Concepts, and Perspectives. 2. Policies, Practices, and Programs. 3. Cultural and Linguistic Diversity and Exceptionality. 4. Parents, Families, and Exceptionality. Part 2: A STUDY OF PERSONS WITH SPECIAL NEEDS. 5. Persons with Mental Retardation. 6. Persons with Learning Disabilities. 7. Persons with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. 8. Persons with Emotional or Behavioral Disorders. 9. Persons Who Are Gifted and Talented. 10. Persons with Speech and Language Disorders. 11. Persons with Hearing Impairments. 12. Persons with Visual Impairments. 13. Persons with Autism Spectrum Disorder. 14. Persons with Physical Disabilities, Health Disabilities, and Traumatic Brain Injury. Appendix A: Federal Definitions of Disabilities. Appendix B: Sample Individualized Education Program. Appendix C: Sample Individualized Family Services Plan. Glossary. Name Index. Subject Index.




Handbook of Individual Differences in Cognition


Book Description

As cognitive models of behavior continue to evolve, the mechanics of cognitive exceptionality, with its range of individual variations in abilities and performance, remains a challenge to psychology. Reaching beyond the standard view of exceptional cognition equaling superior intelligence, the Handbook of Individual Differences in Cognition examines the latest findings from psychobiology, cognitive psychology, and neuroscience, for a comprehensive state-of-the-art volume. Breaking down cognition in terms of attentional mechanisms, working memory, and higher-order processing, contributors discuss general models of cognition and personality. Chapter authors build on this foundation as they revisit current theory in such areas as processing effort and general arousal and examine emerging methods in individual differences research, including new data on the role of brain plasticity in cognitive function. The possibility of a unified theory of individual differences in cognitive ability and the extent to which these variables may account for real-world competencies are emphasized, and commentary chapters offer suggestions for further research priorities. Coverage highlights include: The relationship between cognition and temperamental traits. The development of autobiographical memory. Anxiety and attentional control. The neurophysiology of gender differences in cognitive ability. Intelligence and cognitive control. Individual differences in dual task coordination. The effects of subclinical depression on attention, memory, and reasoning. Mood as a shaper of information. Researchers, clinicians, and graduate students in psychology and cognitive sciences, including clinical psychology and neuropsychology, personality and social psychology, neuroscience, and education, will find the Handbook of Individual Differences in Cognition an expert guide to the field as it currently stands and to its agenda for the future.