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Learning disabilities is what this Journal is about. In the following article, Dr. Barsch sets forth past, present and possibilities for the future of the field...

Numerous research studies (e.g., Anderson, Kutash, & Duchnowski, 2001; Lane, Carter, Pierson, & Glaeser, 2006; Volpe, Dupaul, Jitendra, & Tresco, 2009; Wei, Blackorby, & Schiller, 2011) have shown that students with disabilities generally exhibit lower reading scores than their peers without disabilities. However, questions remain about the possibility of longitudinal differences among high-incidence disability classifications (e.g., speech/language impairments, SLI; emotional disturbances, ED; learning disabilities, LD; and attention deficit disorders, ADD). This study investigated growth patterns in reading achievement among middle school students from 5th to 8th grade with different high incidence disability classifications on one state's high-stakes assessment. After a repeated measures analysis of variance and post hoc testing, results reveal that students identified as LD and SLI evidenced more growth in reading than those classified as either ADD or ED. In light of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 legislation, findings about the various growth patterns are discussed with respect to policy, measurement, and practical implications. © 2016 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Several perspectives dominate as explanations for neighborhood preferences: pure race, racial proxy, race-based neighborhood stereotyping, and race-associated neighborhood factors. This analysis extends and supports the pure race and race-associated neighborhood factors arguments by showing that these theories are applied differently depending on respondents' social class, race and ethnicity, and whether they are talking about white, black, or Latino neighborhoods. Race-associated factors are emphasized for white and black neighborhoods, but pure race serves as a better theoretical framework for understanding people's preferences for Latino neighborhoods. I analyze qualitative interview data, using maps of real neighborhoods and hypothetical neighborhood show cards, to examine the neighborhood preferences of 65 white, black, and Latino residents in Ogden, Utah, and Buffalo, New York.

This article builds on existing knowledge of inmate resistance by analyzing formerly incarcerated women's narratives about prison food. Participants described trying to secure extra cafeteria portions, hoarding food, smuggling and stealing food, and cooking and eating in the cellsall to resist prison power and gain some control over their lives by managing what, how, when, and with whom they ate. These data shed light on prison life and suggest changes to food policy to curb inmate resistance and bolster the rehabilitative potential of correctional facilities.

For more than a century the social work profession has had a dual purpose: to promote individual well-being and social justice, but the micro-macro divide is fragmenting the profession. This article suggests that the profession's aim might best be realized by adopting a unifying purpose, a just sense of well-being. Research on complex adaptive systems conceptualizes a unifying purpose as vertical integration carried out in differentiated ways in discrete moments of practice in various settings. Interpersonal neurobiology and Aristotle's interdependence of character virtues and practical judgment inform a corresponding shift from the dualities of personal and professional to the social worker as a person with differentiated professional capacities and activities. Integration with differentiation enhances capacity to promote the profession's purpose.

Unusual events, beyond mere coincidences, may occur during the course of psychotherapy. Yet, clinical training often does not prepare therapists how to understand and potentially engage with these encounters. The aim of this report is to explore the emergence of synchronistic events in therapy, while providing two clinical case composites to illustrate the author's central points. Drawing on the Celtic concept of thin places, a new understanding of synchronicities and the therapeutic relationship is offered.

Patterns of reading difficulty provide an educationally useful way to think about different kinds of reading problems, whether those problems are mainly experiential in nature (e.g., those common among English learners) or associated with disabilities (e.g., those typical of children with dyslexia). This article reviews research on three common patterns of poor reading: specific word-reading difficulties, specific reading-comprehension difficulties, and mixed reading difficulties. The purpose of the article is to explain how teachers can use assessments to identify individual struggling readers' patterns of reading difficulties, and how this information is valuable in differentiating classroom instruction and planning interventions.

This study explored American and Portuguese elementary teachers' preferences in planning for literacy instruction using the Language Arts Activity Grid (LAAG; Cunningham, Zibulsky, Stanovich, & Stanovich, 2009), on which teachers described their preferred instructional activities for a hypothetical 2-h language arts block. Portuguese teachers (N = 186) completed Portuguese versions of a background questionnaire and LAAG electronically, in Survey Monkey; American teachers (N = 102) completed identical English measures using paper and pencil. Results showed that teachers in both groups usually addressed comprehension and reading fluency on their LAAGs and that they also allocated the most time to these two areas. However, American teachers were more likely to include teacher-directed fluency activities, whereas Portuguese teachers were more likely to include fluency activities that were not teacher directed. Significantly more American than Portuguese teachers addressed phonics in their planning, whereas significantly more Portuguese than American teachers addressed writing processes such as revision. Both groups of educators demonstrated large variability in planning, with many teachers omitting important components of literacy identified by researchers, for writing as well as reading. The study highlights the importance of providing teachers with comprehensive, research-based core literacy curricula as well as professional development on key components of literacy. Study findings also suggest significant relationships between orthographic transparency and teachers' instructional planning.

Aims: There is a need for greater understanding of the recursive processes involved in drug policy development and its impact on stakeholders. The aim of this study was to examine the challenges of implementing marijuana policy in Massachusetts, where recent policy shifts have occurred. Methods: Qualitative data were generated from ethnographic field notes, media reports, public records and in-depth interviews with 25 stakeholders, including six medical marijuana dispensary entrepreneurs, eight health care professionals and 11 medical marijuana patients. Data were triangulated using a grounded theory approach. Findings: Stakeholders expressed confusion and misunderstanding, and demonstrated that they held conflicting interpretations of the policy and regulations. Analyses revealed gaps in policy development and implementation that are organised by three specific core implementation processes and the themes of transparency, communication and education. Conclusions: Findings show a need for more transparency in implementation processes, a more effective mode of communicating regulations, and a comprehensive plan for medical marijuana education. Based on our findings, we provide recommendations to help policymakers in the US and other countries considering legalisation of marijuana or other drugs.

Photovoice, a community-based participatory research method that allows participants to inform research questions in an intimate way, has proven successful with youth. A diverse group of teenage girls living in New York City were asked to take photographs and reflect on what messages they received and from whom, how these messages translate across cultures and ethnicities, and how these messages are internalized and acted on. The group selected specific photographs to discuss together and themes emerged to answer the research questions; themes were reinforced by journal responses and agreed on by the group at the concluding session. The participants identified the media, peers, and family as cultural influencers on body image but noted that these messages change depending on the delivering medium. Participants not only offered recommendations with policy implications for advertising and media giants but also urged public health practitioners, teachers, and other key stakeholders working with young women of color to simply provide them with more space for talking. While Photovoice served as an effective methodology for gaining a more expansive understanding of how body image messages are received with young women of color, the tool should be considered for youth development interventions that take a community-based participatory approach. © 2015, © 2015 Society for Public Health Education.

The molecular mechanisms underlying phenotypic plasticity are not well understood. Identifying mechanisms underlying alternative reproductive tactics (ARTs) in species for which the behavioural and fitness consequences of this variation are well characterized provides an opportunity to integrate evolutionary and mechanistic understanding of the maintenance of variation within populations. In the ocellated wrasse Symphodus ocellatus, the behavioural phenotypes of three distinct male morphs (sneakers, satellites and nesting males), which arise from a single genome, have been thoroughly characterized. To determine the neuroendocrine and genomic mechanisms associated with discrete phenotypic variation and ARTs in S. ocellatus in their natural environment, we constructed a whole-brain de novo transcriptome and compared global patterns of gene expression between sexes and male morphs. Next, we quantified circulating cortisol and 11-ketotestosterone (11-kt), mediators of male reproductive behaviours, as well as stress and gonadal steroid hormone receptor expression in the preoptic area, ventral subpallial division of the telencephalon and dorsolateral telencephalon, critical brain regions for social and reproductive behaviours. We found higher levels of 11-kt in nesting males and higher levels of cortisol in sneaker males relative to other male morphs and females. We also identified distinct patterns of brain region-specific hormone receptor expression between males such that most hormone receptors are more highly expressed in satellites and nesting males relative to sneakers and females. Our results establish the neuroendocrine and molecular mechanisms that underlie ARTs in the wild and provide a foundation for experimentally testing hypotheses about the relationship between neuromolecular processes and reproductive success. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Fish exhibit impaired sensory function and altered behaviour at levels of ocean acidification expected to occur owing to anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions during this century. We provide the first evidence of the effects of ocean acidification on reproductive behaviour of fish in the wild. Satellite and sneaker male ocellated wrasse (Symphodus ocellatus) compete to fertilize eggs guarded by dominant nesting males. Key mating behaviours such as dominant male courtship and nest defence did not differ between sites with ambient versus elevated CO2 concentrations. Dominant males did, however, experience significantly lower rates of pair spawning at elevated CO2 levels. Despite the higher risk of sperm competition found at elevated CO2, we also found a trend of lower satellite and sneaker male paternity at elevated CO2 Given the importance of fish for food security and ecosystem stability, this study highlights the need for targeted research into the effects of rising CO2 levels on patterns of reproduction in wild fish. Copyright © 2016 The Author(s).

Prior research has shown that nonhumans show an extreme preference for variable-over fixed-delays to reinforcement. This well-established preference for variability occurs because a reinforcer's strength or “value” decreases according to a curvilinear function as its delay increases. The purpose of the present experiments was to investigate whether this preference for variability occurs with human participants making hypothetical choices. In three experiments, participants recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk made choices between variable and fixed monetary rewards. In a variable-delay procedure, participants repeatedly chose between a reward delivered either immediately or after a delay (with equal probability) and a reward after a fixed delay (Experiments 1 and 2). In a double-reward procedure, participants made choices between an alternative consisting of two rewards, one delivered immediately and one after a delay, and a second alternative consisting of a single reward delivered after a delay (Experiments 1 and 3). Finally, all participants completed a standard delay-discounting task. Although we observed both curvilinear discounting and magnitude effects in the standard discounting task, we found no consistent evidence of a preference for variability-as predicted by two prominent models of curvilinear discounting (i.e., a simple hyperbola and a hyperboloid)-in our variable-delay and double-reward procedures. This failure to observe a preference for variability may be attributed to the hypothetical, rule-governed nature of choices in the present study. In such contexts, participants may adopt relatively simple strategies for making more complex choices.

The long-term outcomes associated with happiness and meaning-making were examined by following up on participants in previous studies on experiential learning an average of 2.5 years later. Measures of happiness and meaning-making were extracted by analyzing the participants' journals using a computerized text-analysis program. Happiness as assessed by a composite measure of positive emotionality showed weak associations with the measures of adaptive functioning, and was negatively correlated with optimism, as well as positively correlated with emotion suppression. By contrast, meaning-making as assessed by composite measures of cognitive processing and self-distancing was robustly positively correlated with almost all measures of adaptive functioning. Regression analyses revealed that the two measures of meaning and their interaction term accounted for 20-24% of the variance in predicting the outcome measures. This study revealed that there may be at times a trade-off between happiness and meaning-making as well as a reversal in their patterns of long-term outcomes.

In species with internal fertilization, females can favour certain males over others, not only before mating but also within the female's reproductive tract after mating. Here, we ask whether such directional post-mating (that is, cryptic) female mate choice can also occur in species with external fertilization. Using an in vitro sperm competition experiment, we demonstrate that female ovarian fluid (ovarian fluid) changes the outcome of sperm competition by decreasing the importance of sperm number thereby increasing the relative importance of sperm velocity. We further show that ovarian fluid does not differentially affect sperm from alternative male phenotypes, but generally enhances sperm velocity, motility, straightness and chemoattraction. Under natural conditions, female ovarian fluid likely increases the paternity of the preferred parental male phenotype, as these males release fewer but faster sperm. These results imply females have greater control over fertilization and potential to exert selection on males in species with external fertilization than previously thought possible.

Adolescents are sensitive to the anxiolytic effect of ethanol, and evidence suggests that they may be more sensitive to stress than adults. Relatively little is known, however, about age-related differences in stress modulation of ethanol drinking or stress modulation of ethanol-induced sedation and hypnosis. We observed that chronic restraint stress transiently exacerbated free-choice ethanol drinking in adolescent, but not in adult, rats. Restraint stress altered exploration patterns of a light-dark box apparatus in adolescents and adults. Stressed animals spent significantly more time in the white area of the maze and made significantly more transfers between compartments than their non-stressed peers. Behavioral response to acute stress, on the other hand, was modulated by prior restraint stress only in adults. Adolescents, unlike adults, exhibited ethanol-induced motor stimulation in an open field. Stress increased the duration of loss of the righting reflex after a high ethanol dose, yet this effect was similar at both ages. Ethanol-induced sleep time was much higher in adult than in adolescent rats, yet stress diminished ethanol-induced sleep time only in adults. The study indicates age-related differences that may increase the risk for initiation and escalation in alcohol drinking. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.