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This is a topic that I was meaning to blog about (eventually) but Kevin has put together a much better explanation that I ever could… Check out Revisiting Aptitude

The distinction between aptitude and ability is an important one that shouldn’t be blurred. Unlike the ability < -> achievement discrepancy which is one indicator (again one indicator) of a learning disability; if we are to conceive of an aptitude < -> achievement discrepancy then it seems that we would be expecting consistency. Since the specific component skills/processes necessary to complete the task of say reading would best predict that skill then low aptitude and achievement could be conceived as another indicator of a learning disability.

So it turns out that the conscious mind is a simpleton. This recent bit of scientific trivia supports my long held belief that taking a nap is the solution to 99% of the worlds problems. From now on I’m not making any decisions until I consult my subconscious. First thing monday morning I’m sending in a requisition for a hammock for my office. I won’t allow my reckless and irresponsible conscious mind to do any more damage that it already has…

Oh I know what some of you cynical folks are thinking: “joe’s just making an excuse for being lazy.” Well i have news for you - that’s your loony conscious talking. The hammock is a tool not a toy; and I’m not going stand idly by and allow anyones conscious thoughts to carelessly provoke me into to thinking otherwise.

Finally research that justifies my desire to sit around and ponder NOTHING. Or so it seems to the untrained eye… What’s really happening according to this article is that “…those idle times, perhaps spent gazing into space, are actually crucial for our brains to replay, and learn from, recent experiences.” So if you happened to see me so engaged then leave me alone… I’m working.

More to the point it is hypothesized that “eliminating such breaks could actually interfere with learning, and perhaps even explain why hyperactive children often have learning difficulties.” Of course it could also be that inattentive /hyperactive kids have difficulty attending to the relevant stimulus which makes it difficult to learn.

This picture has been making it’s way around the net and since I haven’t blogged in weeks I figured it might be something worthy to post. I’m filing it under drivel although it probably has some psych aspects to it.

Here is what you need to do: Read the rest of this entry »

I have batch of photos that I’m prepping to post soon. This will again be password protected but I have a very liberal policy so just email me if you want to see the pics (psychjoe at psychjoe dot com). For what it’s worth I decided to protect the pics because I had this dream where someone had photoshopped pictures of my kids and… well I would rather not talk about it. Suffice to say that I don’t want their pictures to be used to satisfy someone’s sick twisted fantasies. As long as you don’t fall into that category then you can expect to get access.

The world is an imperfect place and often we have to endure any number of small compromises (and occasional indignities). Recently on the NASP listserv the vexing issue of Grade Equivalents was again discussed. This issue is troubling on so many fronts, not the least of which is that they are just so terribly deceiving. On the surface they appear to be a straightforward statement about a students skill level, but underneath lurks a convoluted explanation that belies this apparent simplicity. Suffice to say that dealing with them is, at the very least, an annoyance that many evaluators would rather avoid.

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No I haven’t fallen off the edge of cyberspace. My WiFi quit working so I did that handy WindowsXP System Restore. First of all it’s not a very user friendly feature. It messed up some of my software - BUT my WiFi began working. So I fiddled with it trying to ascertain what new piece of software is corrupting my WiFi driver (big time sink!) and eventually gave up and reinstalled the operating system (bigger time sink!!). I also created a partition for Linux but Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s take a break from the reading processes and focus on something that’s a bit more practical. I’m not going to weigh into the issue of whether local norms are a good or bad idea for identifying kids with disabilities. Those kinds of issues are fun to debate but are quite frankly above my pay grade. The simple fact of the matter is that many are being asked to use local norms so I’m going to provide a quick tutorial using a popular software package to demonstrate how to derive your own local norms.

Some background in using Excel (or an equivalent package) is probably necessary since this is not an Excel tutorial. Today we’ll just go over getting the data set up (normalizing the data) then ease into the statistics in next post (or posts).

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Do non-English speaking countries have spelling bees? This curious competition seems to be primarily an American phenomenon. From what I can tell it came about in the early 20^th century at about the same time that child labor laws were being enacted. Since television hadn’t been invented yet parents were frantic to find a mind-numbing task to fill the void – enter the spelling bee…

Spelling English words is difficult otherwise we wouldn’t be able to make a competition out of it. This is due to the fact that our language wasn’t carefully designed. Instead it was slapped together in a haphazard manner with generous amounts of spackle, duct tape and bailing wire. What began as a Germanic language soon found its spelling system eviscerated by the

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