The Baldovan Institution Abuse Inquiry: a forgotten scandal.

In this paper, I resurrect a long-forgotten inquiry into abuse and maladministration at an institution for people with learning disabilities, the Baldovan Institution near Dundee, that has lain buried in the archives for the past 60 years. I contrast the response to it with the very different response to the similar revelations of the Ely Hospital Inquiry more than a decade later. Whereas Ely opened up the institutional sector to greater public scrutiny and brought with it a formal commitment from the government to shift the balance of care away from the long-term hospital, Baldovan produced recommendations that were limited to the institution and had no impact on public policy or institutional practice. I consider the reasons for this and its implications.

Neuropsychology of Learning Disabilities: The Past and the Future.

Over the past 50 years, research on children and adults with learning disabilities has seen significant advances. Neuropsychological research historically focused on the administration of tests sensitive to brain dysfunction to identify putative neural mechanisms underlying learning disabilities that would serve as the basis for treatment. Led by research on classifying and identifying learning disabilities, four pivotal changes in research paradigms have produced a contemporary scientific, interdisciplinary, and international understanding of these disabilities. These changes are (1) the emergence of cognitive science, (2) the development of quantitative and molecular genetics, (3) the advent of noninvasive structural and functional neuroimaging, and (4) experimental trials of interventions focused on improving academic skills and addressing comorbid conditions. Implications for practice indicate a need to move neuropsychological assessment away from a primary focus on systematic, comprehensive assessment of cognitive skills toward more targeted performance-based assessments of academic achievement, comorbid conditions, and intervention response that lead directly to evidence-based treatment plans. Future research will continue to cross disciplinary boundaries to address questions regarding the interaction of neurobiological and contextual variables, the importance of individual differences in treatment response, and an expanded research base on (a) the most severe cases, (b) older people with LDs, and (c) domains of math problem solving, reading comprehension, and written expression. (JINS, 2017, 23, 930-940).

Citizenship and Learning Disabled People: The Mental Health Charity MIND's 1970s Campaign in Historical Context.

Current policy and practice directed towards people with learning disabilities originates in the deinstitutionalisation processes, civil rights concerns and integrationist philosophies of the 1970s and 1980s. However, historians know little about the specific contexts within which these were mobilised. Although it is rarely acknowledged in the secondary literature, MIND was prominent in campaigning for rights-based services for learning disabled people during this time. This article sets MIND's campaign within the wider historical context of the organisation's origins as a main institution of the inter-war mental hygiene movement. The article begins by outlining the mental hygiene movement's original conceptualisation of 'mental deficiency' as the antithesis of the self-sustaining and responsible individuals that it considered the basis of citizenship and mental health. It then traces how this equation became unravelled, in part by the altered conditions under the post-war Welfare State, in part by the mental hygiene movement's own theorising. The final section describes the reconceptualisation of citizenship that eventually emerged with the collapse of the mental hygiene movement and the emergence of MIND. It shows that representations of MIND's rights-based campaigning (which have, in any case, focused on mental illness) as individualist, and fundamentally opposed to medicine and psychiatry, are inaccurate. In fact, MIND sought a comprehensive community-based service, integrated with the general health and welfare services and oriented around a reconstruction of learning disabled people's citizenship rights.

Heritage and Stigma. Co-producing and communicating the histories of mental health and learning disability.

University engagement with mental health services has traditionally been informed by the vocational and pedagogical links between the two sectors. However, a growth in the interest in public history and in the history of mental healthcare has offered new opportunities for those in the humanities to engage new audiences and to challenge perceptions about care in the past. The introduction of the 'impact agenda' and related funding streams has further encouraged academics to contribute to historical debates, and to those concerning current services. One such example of this is the Arts and Humanities Research Council funded Heritage and Stigma project at the University of Huddersfield, which was conceived to support mental health and learning disability charities in the exploration and dissemination of their own histories. Using this project as a case study, this paper will draw on primary source material to reflect on the opportunities and challenges of working in partnership with such groups. In particular, it will consider the need to address issues of stigma and exclusion in tandem with a critical understanding of the moves to 'community care' instigated by landmark legislation in the form of the 1959 Mental Health Act. Overall, it provides evidence of an inclusive, coproductive model of design and highlights the positive contribution to communicating mental health made by those based in the humanities.

The DSM and learning difficulties: formulating a genealogy of the learning-disabled subject.

The article examines the manner in which the learning-disabled subject is created as an object within contemporary psychiatric discourse by means of a genealogical analysis of the learning-disorders in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). It investigates how this pathology was formed historically in the text, what metamorphoses it underwent, and their epistemic significance. First, the theoretical underpinnings of the sociological discourse on DSM are presented, giving a brief background of the DSM status in the Israeli context. Many problematic characteristics in the text are unveiled, by means of critiques from sociology, anthropology and discourse studies. Second, the changing definitions and conceptualizations of learning-disorders in the seven editions of the Manual and the accompanying case studies (1952-2013) are examined. It becomes apparent that the disorders have undergone changes that have enabled the biomedical paradigm to triumph. The implications of these transformations are addressed.

Rosa Anita Hagin (1921-2014).

This article memorializes Rosa Anita Hagin (1921-2014). Rosa's involvement with the American Psychological Association (APA) included associate member (1953), member (1958), fellow of Division 16 (School Psychology) and Division 37 (Child, Youth, and Family Services), and Division 16 secretary (1967-1970), Council Representative (1968-1971), and president (1971-1972). Rosa was a licensed psychologist, a diplomate in school psychology from the America Board of Professional Psychology, and served as president of the American Academy of School Psychology (1996-1997). Rosa received Division 16's Distinguished Service Award (1979), the Distinguished Achievement Award of the Learning Disabilities Association of American (1992), and the Orton Award from the International Dyslexia Association (1993). She was chosen to present the 2000 Legends Address for the National Association of School Psychologists. A professor with Fordham University-Lincoln Center's school psychology program since 1979, Rosa established the School Consultation Center, which was named in her honor after she retired and became professor emeritus in 1990. She continued her independent practice, researching the neuropsychology of learning disabilities, disseminating the Search and Teach (a program for the prevention of learning disabilities and their emotional consequences), consulting at a residential school for emotionally disturbed children, and serving as an expert witness in litigation on behalf of adults with learning disabilities.

Biographical note on Harold Solan (1921-2012), optometrist and learning disabilities researcher.

This paper gives a brief biographical sketch of the career of Harold A. Solan and discusses his five books.

Tracking citations: a science detective story.

The earliest hypothesis concerning the phonetic-phonological roots of reading and writing learning disabilities is usually attributed to Boder in the U.S. literature. Yet by following a trail of references to work in psychology and education conducted some 30 years earlier in the USSR, we find the seeds of this idea already well established in the work of Russian educator and psychologist Roza Levina. Here we trace the Soviet origins of these ideas and discuss their heretofore unrecognized importance in the field of learning disabilities and special education.

Does money matter? The effects of cash transfers on child development in rural Ecuador.

A large body of research indicates that child development is sensitive to early-life environments, so that poor children are at higher risk for poor cognitive and behavioral outcomes. These developmental outcomes are important determinants of success in adulthood. Yet, remarkably little is known about whether poverty-alleviation programs improve children's developmental outcomes. We examine how a government-run cash transfer program for poor mothers in rural Ecuador influenced the development of young children. Random assignment at the parish level is used to identify program effects. Our data include a set of measures of cognitive ability that are not typically included in experimental or quasi-experimental studies of the impact of cash transfers on child well-being, as well as a set of physical health measures that may be related to developmental outcomes. The cash transfer program had positive, although modest, effects on the physical, cognitive, and socioemotional development of the poorest children in our sample.

Turning the educability narrative: Samuel A. Kirk at the intersection of learning disability and "mental retardation".

It is often assumed that current disability constructs exist in conceptual isolation from one another. This article explores the tangled historical relationship between "mental retardation" and learning disability in the writings and speeches of special education pioneer Samuel A. Kirk. Beginning in the 1950s, Kirk repeatedly told an educability narrative that described children with low IQ scores as capable students worthy of instruction. However, when he tried to clearly distinguish between the new learning disability construct and the older mental retardation, Kirk altered his standard tale. True intellectual potential then shifted to the learning disability, leaving mental retardation doubly stigmatized as the disorder of educational infertility.

Confiabilidad de un cuestionario para rastreo de trastorno de aprendizaje (CEPA) en niños en edad escolar / Reliability of a learning disabilities assessment questionnaire (CEPA) in school-aged children

The assessment questionnaires are basic tools used in research or in programs geared to the early, simple, and fast detection of a sickness in the general population, with a high level of accepted reliability and validity. Objective: to determine the reliability of an assessment cuestionnaire dealing with learning disabilities; which makes easy the detection of children who are more likely to have learning disabilities. Patients and Methods: a random sample of 681 children was chosen; they belonged to the 3rd and 4th socio-economic strata, aged 8 and 11, of primary basic schooling education, from 4 educational institutions of a neighboring village of the Metropolitan Area of Medellin and who willingly decided to participate in the study. From this population, a non-random sample of 80 individuals was taken who met the inclusion criteria to carry out a pilot test. The questionnaire comprises 39 items comprising 8 frequent areas of difficulties. It is designed to assess the cognitive and language processes.

Los cuestionarios de rastreo son herramientas básicas usadas en las investigaciones o en los programas dirigidos a la detección temprana,sencilla y rápida de una enfermedad en la población general, con un nivel de confiabilidad y de validez aceptados. Objetivo: Determinar la confiabilidad de un cuestionario de rastreo para la evaluación de las dificultades del aprendizaje que facilite la detección de los niños que tengan mayor probabilidad de tener trastornos del aprendizaje. Pacientes y métodos. Se seleccionóuna muestra aleatoria de 681 niños de estrato socio económico 3 y 4, en edades entre 8 y 11 años, de escolaridad básica primaria, de 4instituciones de un corregimiento adjunto al área metropolitana de la ciudad de Medellín y que aceptaron participar en el estudio. De este universo poblacional se retomo unamuestra no aleatoria de 80 sujetos quecumplieran los criterios de inclusión pararealizan una prueba piloto. El cuestionario comprende 39 ítemes que agrupa 8 áreas frecuentes de dificultades, está diseñado paraevaluar procesos cognoscitivos y del lenguaje.

INCAP studies of malnutrition and cognitive behavior.

The Institute of Nutrition of Central America and Panama (INCAP) has made major contributions to the study of the effects of malnutrition on learning. This report summarizes work on the relationship of nutrition to children's learning and development from the 1960's through 1998. The Oriente Longitudinal Study examined the effects of two types of supplementation for mothers and young children on their growth and development (an energy-only drink compared with a protein-energy drink) using a quasi-experimental design. Both drinks were supplemented with micronutrients, and were offered daily. As a result of the research on malnutrition and mental development, researchers could conclude by 1993 that supplementary feeding of infants and young children resulted in significant increases cognitive development and school performance through adolescence. The research also suggested that the pathways that link malnutrition with later development are not only through the neurological system but also operate through changes in child behavior which affect the kinds of care children receive. Other research on learning and development showed that families understood the concept of intelligence, demonstrated the link between micronutrients and cognitive development, and documented the amount of wastage or repetition and drop-out that occurs in Guatemalan schools.

Language, labels and diagnosis: an idiot's guide to learning disability.

The phrase 'learning disability' is just one in a long succession of descriptors applied to those people in our society who are categorized by a matrix of psycho-medical assessments, marginalized by compromised intellectual function, characterized by increased health needs and excluded from the mainstream on the basis of reduced social opportunity. But what exactly is 'learning disability'? Is there an empirical basis to the label, or is it just another example of bureaucratic language objectifying individuals in a process of medicalization? Historical examples will be used to illustrate the origins of the taxonomy that has subsequently formed the basis of the labelling process. The more recent words of individuals labelled with learning disability too will be introduced to offer some grounding to the debate. Any apparent problem belongs to language more than science. Narrative approaches to understanding are suggested as a useful alternative to traditional scientific inquiry.

Wittgenstein's language games as a theory of learning disabilities.

Sociological approaches to the understanding of learning disabilities are perhaps not as fully developed as they might be. Wittgenstein's notion of the language game is elucidated, and its relevance to the analysis of learning disabilities as a social phenomenon is explained. This gives some insight into an alternative conception of what learning disabilities might be, and why people who are classified as having learning disabilities continue, to some extent, to be excluded from full participation in society.