5 I – J

 

IDEA (see Individuals with Disabilities Education Act)

Idiographic

Idiographic research approaches concentrate on study of individuals and their uniqueness. Often, they are qualitative rather than quantitative in nature. More important regarding assessment, an idiographic lens focuses on the unique strengths, weakness, perceptions, conflicts, feelings and environmental factor that are thought to lead to the expression of overt behavior. This approach can be contrasted, regarding both research and practice, with the nomothetic approach.

Idiopathic

A disease (or isolated symptoms) that occurs without a known cause, such as an underlying medical condition. Idiopathic scoliosis, for example, denotes spinal deformity without an underlying medical cause. Sometimes conditions important to school psychologists, such as epilepsy, occur without a known cause (i.e., are idiopathic). In other instances, the same appearance is due to an underlying condition, such as epilepsy associated with a head injury or a genetic condition like tuberous sclerosis complex. The latter instance could be said to be symptomatic rather than idiopathic.

IEP (Individualized Education Program)

A plan created annually for each student who receives special education and related services.

Implicit bias

This relates to automatic, often unconscious and unwanted bias concerning others, such as cultural, racial, or ethnic groups. Implicit bias is a particular concern when school psychologists are conducting assessments.

Independent education evaluation (IEE)

An IEE is an evaluation completed by a qualified examiner who is not employed by a school district (i.e., is independent). Parents have the right to an IEE under certain conditions: (1.) a school district has not adequately determined whether a special education-related disability is present, (2.) fails to determine how a disability affects the student’s academic and educational progress, (3.) did not indicate what services would be needed to adequately address the student’s needs (Breiger, Bishop & Benjamin, 2014). IEEs must be conducted with no cost to parents. School teams are obliged to consider the results of IEEs when contemplating eligibility for special education services. See Zirkel (2021) for additional details.

Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)

IDEA is the vast federal special education law that includes detailed definitions and rules. Among its chief purposes is to assure a free appropriate public education (FAPE) to any student who qualifies for special education and related services.

Among the groups afforded services are:

    • Infants and toddlers (under three years of age) with developmental delays in:
    1. cognitive development
    2. physical development
    3. communication development
    4. social or emotional development
    5. adaptive development

Also included are those with diagnoses with a high probability of developmental delay (e.g., Down syndrome).

    • Children 3 through 9 years with developmental delays. Virtually the same areas of delay mentioned immediately above apply. However, generic “developmental delay” (or an equivalent term) can be used only in those states that choose to incorporate it in their special education definitions. That is, individual schools cannot opt to arbitrarily use this broad category without their state’s prior specification.
    • Children and youth 3 through 21 years meeting definitions in one or more of the following categories:
    1. autism
    2. deaf-blindness
    3. deafness
    4. emotional disturbance
    5. hearing impairment
    6. intellectual disability
    7. multiple disabilities
    8. orthopedic impairment
    9. other health impairment
    10. specific learning disability
    11. speech or language impairment
    12. traumatic brain injury
    13. visual impairment (including blindness)

Numerous additional provisos exist (e.g., the problem cannot be due to merely speaking another language or limited English proficiency or lack of appropriate instruction). See additional entries that include definitions for autism, intellectual disabilities, other health impairment, specific learning disability, speech or language impairment, and traumatic brain injury. These are categories with obvious implications for school psychologists.

Additional information for school psychologists, teachers and administrators is available from the following U.S. Department of Education link: https://sites.ed.gov/idea/about-idea/.

Further, supplemental information for parents is available from the following U.S. Department of Education link: http://nichcy.org

Incontinence (bladder or bowel; see enuresis or encopresis)

Inderal® (see anti-anxiety medications)

Informed consent

A concept important to school psychologists when a parent consents to have his/her minor child undergo an evaluation. Because minors are not deemed competent to provide consent for themselves, parents must do so for them. The “informed” portion of the concept means that the implications and potential consequences of consent are recognized by someone able to understand them (i.e., a minor’s parent or guardian). The precise wording regarding informed consent to evaluate under IDEA appears below.

The public agency proposing to conduct an initial evaluation to determine if a child qualifies as a child with a disability under 34 CFR 300.8 must, after providing notice consistent with 34 CFR 300.503 and 300.504, obtain informed consent , consistent with 34 CFR 300.9, from the parent of the child before conducting the evaluation.  34 CFR 300.300(a)(1)(i)] [20 U.S.C. 1414(a)(1)(D)(i)(I)]

Inpatient treatment (see psychiatric hospitalization)

Institute of Education Science (IES)

IES is the research section of the U.S. Department of Education. IES was created in 2002 with a mission “to provide rigorous evidence on which to ground education practice and policy.” Besides providing a logical structure that specifies various levels of educational research, IES funds projects and disseminates findings. Especially relevant to practicing school psychologists is the What Works Clearinghouse, which is housed within IES. As a repository for educational findings, the What Works Clearinghouse contains vast information about programs that might benefit the students with whom school psychologists work. The purpose is to set scientific standards and measure studies against these standards so that decision-makers have trustworthy information.

Research findings within the What Works Clearinghouse are organized by topics, of which the following are included:

  • Literacy
  • Mathematics
  • Science
  • Behavior
  • Children and Youth with Disabilities
  • English Language Learners
  • Teacher Excellence
  • Charter Schools
  • Early Childhood (Pre-K)
  • Kindergarten to 12th grade
  • Path to graduation
  • Post-secondary

Findings, which are easily accessed electronically, include numerous reports. For example, within the “Behavior” heading, one finds more than 20 intervention programs whose related research has been scrutinized and then summarized. In the same vein, reading research, found under the “Literacy” heading, includes eye-opening empirical findings about the efficacy of various popular programs.

The following link is for the What Works Clearinghouse: https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/. This link is for the broader IES site: https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ies/index.html

Intellectual disability (American Association of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities) definition

A disability characterized by significant limitations in both intellectual functioning and in adaptive behavior, which covers many everyday social and practical skills. This disability originates before the age of 18.

See the following link of more details: https://www.aaidd.org/intellectual-disability/definition

Intellectual disability (federal) definition

Significantly subaverage general intellectual functioning, existing concurrently with deficits in adaptive behavior and manifested during the developmental period that adversely affects a child’s educational performance.  Also see DSM-5, page 33, for a definition.

See the following link: https://sites.ed.gov/idea/regs/b/a/300.8/c/6

Intellectual disability, part score use-cautionary note

School psychologists typically approach intellectual disability (ID) diagnoses with cautiousness. This is both understandable and arguably prudent. In fact, many school psychologists seem to implicitly endorse the premise that it is far better to miss an instance of ID than to assign a diagnosis erroneously. Inadvertently, however, excessive cautiousness may prompt use of such stringent requirements for low IQ scores (a cornerstone of ID determination) that many bona fide cases of ID escape detection. Specifically, rather than requiring just a full scale IQ score below 70 some diagnosticians require that all part scores also fall below 70. For example, rather than a WISC-5 full scale IQ alone of 69, verbal comprehension, perceptual reasoning, working memory, and perceptual reasoning index scores would all need to be 69 or below. For statistical reasons (unexpected failure of scores to regress to the mean) setting multiple stringent cutoff standards means that full scale IQs would always be much lower than 69 for students identified with ID. In fact, in such a scenario a WISC-5 full scale IQ would always be 63 or lower. The net effect would be extremely low rates of identification of students having mild levels of ID. When hardline school psychologists impose universal part score requirements, they risk failing to follow proper professional practice and non-compliance with the IDEA stipulation that all students with disabilities are identified and provided needed services. This topic is covered in exquisite detail by Bergeron and Floyd (2013),  article that arguably all school psychologists should read and contemplate.

Intermittent reinforcement (see schedules of reinforcement)

Internalizing-externalizing psychopathology

This dichotomy refers to the two broad types of emotional or behavior problems commonly found in childhood. Put simply, internalizing problems are personal in nature (internal to the individual) and may not be recognized by others. Affected children or teens, however, typically recognize their own distress, such as feelings of anxiety or depression. Of course, to some extent internalizing problems may be noticed by parents or teachers (e.g., the irritable and moody teen, the nail-biting child).

In contrast, externalizing emotional or behavior problems manifest primarily in overt actions (i.e., they are external in nature), which may or may not be accompanied by subjective upset. These actions often precipitate interpersonal conflict, especially with caregivers or teachers. Examples are overt noncompliance and opposition, conduct problems, or antisocial actions.

This simple internalizing-externalizing distinction seems to make intuitive sense. What’s more, it is often borne out by empirical studies that use statistical techniques, such as factor analysis, as evidence by statistics reported in most commonly used behavioral rating scales (Quay, 1965: Reising et al., 2013).

Interval recording

This refers to a structured behavioral observation technique in which an entire session of classroom observation (e.g., 10 minutes) is subdivided into briefer intervals (e.g., 30 20-second intervals). In general, observers then opt for one of two procedures for recording during each interval. One option is dubbed “partial interval” because if the behavior under question (e.g., out of seat) occurs at any time during an interval it is coded as present for that interval. Further, the behavior is coded as present during that interval regardless of how many discrete occurrences take place during that interval. A second option is dubbed “whole interval” because the behavior under question is coded as present only if it occurs from start to finish within an interval. Again, there is no effort to count each occurrence during the interval. There is also a third option, which involves recording a student’s behavior (e.g., out of seat/not out of seat) at a single point during an interval, such as at the exact instant an interval starts (disregarding any occurrences before or after that instant). This is sometimes referred to as a “point” interval technique.

As a group, interval recording techniques can prove quite valuable for measuring behavior, especially for monitoring behavior change across time. This is true because subjective judgements (“the student seems to be out of her seat less often this week than last”) can be replaced by numerical values (e.g., the exact percentage of intervals out of seat). Moreover, interval techniques are well suited for those situations in which simple behavior frequency counts are impossible. Simply put, some types of behavior do not lend themselves to counting of each occurrence because there is no clear start and stop point that can enable counting (e.g., inattention).

For additional information, see the following link from the University of Kansas: http://www.specialconnections.ku.edu/?q=assessment/data_based_decision_making/teacher_tools/partial_interval_recording.

Interview techniques (see diagnostic interview procedures)

Intuiv® (see stimulants and other ADHD medications)

Invega (see anti-psychotic medications)

Inverse probability fallacy (see comorbidity)

Ipsative

Concerns intra-individual test score interpretation over, or in addition to, inter-individual score interpretation. When school psychologists use multi-part IQ tests (e.g., WISC-5) and search for relative strengths and weakness in score profiles they are engaging in ipsative interpretation. This practice is popular among school psychologists and commonly advocated in the manuals of cognitive tests. It seems logical that intra-individual score differences (the highs and lows of an individual student’s scores) could reveal personal strengths and weaknesses. In turn, detected weaknesses might be either bolster via practice or circumvented during instruction. Strengths could be capitalized on instructionally (also see aptitude x treatment interaction). These practices, however, are controversial and has been the subject of intense scrutiny in research. Dissent is exemplified by the work of McDermott, Fantuzzo, and Glutting (1990), in what has become a classic article entitled, “Just say no to subtest analysis.”

Ipsilateral

Ipsilateral refers to signs or symptoms expressed on the same side of the body where a brain lesion (or injury) exists. This is in contrast to the notion of contralateral (expressed on the other side of the body). Ipsilateral is a potentially important concept for school psychologists because there are some ipsilateral expressions of unilateral (one side only) brain problems. For example, injury to one of the cranial nerves originating in the brain stem gives rise to sensory or motor expressions on the same side of the body. A right side injury to the trigeminal nerve can cause facial problems on the same (the right) side of the face as one example. In contrast, most brain injuries give rise to problems on the opposite side of the body (i.e., contralateral expression). Also, most innervation of the body below the neck is contralateral (perhaps 85% of pathways), with just a few being ipsilateral. This means that injuries to one hemisphere of the cortex may result in some spared functions on the opposite side of body.

Jaundice (neonatal)

This refers to accumulation of bilirubin (a byproduct red blood cell breakdown) in the bloodstream of newborns. The condition is quite common in premature babies, somewhat common in newborns generally, and often viewed as inconsequential regarding health and subsequent development. However, an important distinction exists between highly prevalent “physiological” neonatal jaundice and much rarer “pathological” neonatal jaundice. With pathological jaundice, bilirubin may reach levels sufficient to damage the central nervous system, a condition known as kernicterus. Pathological neonatal jaundice arises from considerations such as maternal-neonatal blood group incompatibility, infections in the bloodstream, or enzyme deficiencies. Blood transfusions might be required. However, for physiological jaundice neonatologists or pediatricians seeking to reduce bilirubin levels may place the neonate under blue-spectrum light. This practice allows bilirubin close to the skin’s surface to be broken down and excreted. Consequently, school psychologists sometimes see references to the use of “bili lights” or “phototherapy” in students’ records.

Despite the assumption of physiological neonatal jaundice’s benign status, a very large Danish study found a 67% increased risk of autism when neonates experienced elevated bilirubin, but this outcome was no longer evident if the mother had experienced prior pregnancies or if the baby was born outside of winter (i.e., not from October to March; Maimburg, Bech, Vaeth, Moller-Madsen, & Olsen, 2010). Others have critiqued this study’s methodology and suggested it promoted unnecessary alarm among families whose baby experienced jaundice (Newman & Croen, 2011).

See the following link from the CDC regarding neonatal jaundice https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/jaundice/index.html

Joint attention

Photo by David L. Wodrich

Joint attention is an important developmental skill acquired by virtually all children without developmental disabilities, such as those with autism. The younger girl in this photo recognizes that the older girl has directed her gaze to something that is probably  important, so she intuitively directs her gaze there also. Critically, without the ability to recognize that another “mind” is processing and attending to elements of the environment such adaptively-critical joint attention would not occur.

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Finger-Tip Facts for School Psychologists Copyright © 2021 by David L. Wodrich is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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