For over 30 years, researchers have studied the social-emotional side of learning disabilities (LD). This article highlights the science-based research on three domains of social skills of children with LD: characteristics, interventions, and the impact of policy. The article concludes with concerns regarding the translation of research on social-emotional factors into practice and the likelihood that social-emotional problems are being adequately addressed in public schools. TANIS BRYAN, Ph.D., is president, Southwest Institute for Families and Children with Special Needs. KAREN BURSTEIN, Ph.D., is vice president, Southwest Institute for Families and Children with Special Needs. CEVRIYE ERGUL, doctoral candidate, is a research assistant, Arizona State University. In God we trust, from all else we expect data. (anon) SCIENCE-BASED DECISION MAKING Special education has long been an empirically based field. Special education policy and practice have been supported by scientific studies since the original IDEA (Public Law 94 142, 1975) included a provision for federal financing of special education research. Typically, special education research has focused on three basic goals: (a) to identify the characteristics that discriminate individuals within a particular disability category from typical individuals or individuals within another disability category; (b) to determine the effectiveness of intervention strategies; and (c) to assess the impact of public policy on constituents. Today, requirements in IDEA and No Child Left Behind (NCLB) mandate the use of scientifically based assessments, curricula, and interventions. Thus, the results of research have become the criteria for selecting assessment measures and curricula, individualizing instruction, making instructional decisions, charting progress, and planning behavioral interventions at individual and schoolwide levels. The topic of social-emotional factors in learning disabilities (LD) has benefited from special education's emphasis on science. Over the past 30 years, an impressive body of research has accumulated detailing the social problems experienced by students with LD, identifying promising classroom-based interventions for ameliorating some of these problems, and testing the effect of public policy (namely, class placement) on the social-emotional status of students with LD. The purpose of this article is to highlight the scientific base in each of three areas: characteristics, interventions, policy impact (i.e., full inclusion). SCOPE OF THE PROBLEMEstimates of the prevalence of social problems in students with LD in the United States range from 38% (Baum, Duffelmeyer, & Geelan, 1988) to 75% (Kavale & Forness, 1996). About 2,800,000 children have been identified as having LD; hence a sizable population of students has LD as social problems. Moreover, social problems have been reported across ages (preschool-elementary-junior-senior high schools-college-adulthood), race and ethnicity (some Volume 27, Winter 2004 45

Students with learning disabilities are more likely than other students to have problems doing homework. In this article, we describe how deficits in language, attention, memory, and organizational skills as well as in reading, writing, and math affect homework performance. We describe family and school factors that may exacerbate-or ameliorate-their problems as well as the intervention research that has included students with learning disabilities. At this point, there appears to be a huge gap between the strategies successfully applied in intervention studies and teachers' preferences for interventions, a serious issue that spills over and has a negative influence on family life. Nonetheless, an emerging area of intervention research suggests that effective efforts to improve homework completion, accuracy, and test performance may require parental involvement, peer cooperation, self-monitoring and graphing, "real-life" assignments, teachercollaborative problem solving, or all.

Differences between digital devices on children's engagement with e-books are examined. The sample included 24 typical 4-year olds enrolled in Head Start. Over a 1-month period, video captures of children's multi-sensory behaviors during shared reading at a tabletop touchscreen computer and teacher-facilitated book browsing with iPads and iPods were obtained. Data were coded on each child at 1-min intervals, examining the simultaneity of behaviors present, then aggregated to determine frequencies of each behavior by device and format. Differences between media devices on median percent of observation time were evaluated. Looking, touching, moving, and gesturing behaviors were significantly different among different devices. Large effect sizes indicated considerable variability attributable to the device. Mobiles support more looking and touching but less moving and gesturing than the tabletop touchscreen; none of the devices favored listening over another. Given the role of haptic perception in digital reading experience, access to mobiles may favor behaviors that support literacy motivation, sense of control, and interaction.

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The authors investigated the influence of language proficiency on the cross-language transfer (CLT) of phonemic awareness in Spanish-speaking kindergarten students and assessed Spanish and English receptive vocabulary and phonemic awareness abilities. Correlation results indicated positive correlations between phonemic awareness across languages; CLT occurred. To investigate the role of proficiency in native language (L1) in CLT, the authors disaggregated the sample into two groups by L1 receptive vocabulary. No evidence for CLT of phonemic awareness emerged among children with below-average L1 skills. Regression results indicated that L1 receptive vocabulary predicted phonemic awareness performance of children's language of instruction. The authors suggest that prereading skills may transfer from L1 to L2 following a different pattern in children lacking L1 proficiency. Further investigation of CLT among children with below-average L1 skills is needed.