The present study sought to examine the relationship between two popular instruments for screening autistic children: the Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS) and the Autism Behavior Checklist (ABC). The sample included 77 individuals. The records of 48 subjects contained firm diagnoses of autism, while the suggestion of autism was found in the remaining records. Correlations between the two scales ranged from -.16 to .73 (median = .39). The validity coefficient between the two total scores was .67. Using cutoff scores recommended by the authors, an analysis of the sensitivity of the two instruments was conducted. The CARS correctly identified 98% of the autistic subjects; it identified 69% of the possibly autistic as autistic. The ABC correctly identified 88% of the autistic subjects, while it identified 48% of those subjects considered possibly autistic as autistic. A phi coefficient was computed to estimate the degree of relationship between the nominal classifications produced by the two instruments. A moderate relationship was found (r phi = .54). Implications of the results are discussed.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relative effectiveness of visual spatial displays to enhance comprehension of important information during instruction with adolescent learning-disabled students. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of two treatment groups. One group was taught by presenting key concepts with a visual spatial display of this information. The other group was taught the same information except that content was presented by texts.Both treatment groups studied in a group task structure. Six experimenter-made tests were developed for this study. Five tests directly measured student mastery of the content taught, whereas the other test was a transfer measure.

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The reliability of scores for the Draw-A-Person Intellectual Ability Test for Children, Adolescents, and Adults is examined with a sample of 110 college students from two universities in the southeast. The alpha coefficient for the total sample and the interscorer and intrascorer reliability for a subset of 31 students are analyzed. The alpha coefficient for the 23 items for the total sample was .82. The correlation coefficient for IQ is .83 for interscorer reliability and .92 for intrascorer reliability. Results are consistent with those reported by the test authors.

The differences in preferences for novelty among school-aged children who varied in chronological age and IQ were investigated. The results indicated that children in the high-IQ group spent significantly more time responding to novel items than did children in the low-IQ group. Also, children in the high-IQ group devoted a significantly higher percentage of time responding to novel items, relative to total item-inspection time, than did children in the low-IQ group. A significant CA X IQ interaction was found, which indicated that older children with higher IQs exhibited a significantly higher mean percentage of novelty preference than any of the other three groups (i.e., low CA-high IQ, high CA-low IQ, and low CA-low IQ). Correlations between novelty scores and IQ were consistent with those found in the infancy literature. The findings are congruent with the theory that preference for novelty is a continuing phenomenon from infancy through childhood and beyond. We infer that the interest shown by human beings in