The Mental Retardation Training program at Notre Dame was formally initiated in 1972 with funds from the Hearst Foundation and the University. In 1974, a five-year training grant was received from NICHD. In 1979, 1984, 1989, 1994, and 1999, the program was given five-year renewals. We seek continuation through 2010 for what we believe has become a highly successful research training program in mental retardation/developmental disabilities (MR/DD). The Research Training Program in MR/DD has the following goals: (1) to provide predoctoral trainees a solid background in general-experimental psychology;(2) to develop selected specializations in the areas of cognition, intelligence, and social-familial processes as they apply to high risk infants and children as well as to individuals with mild retardation and other developmental disabilities;(3) to apply research skills and content knowledge toward understanding human development and remediating a variety of developmental delays, and (4) to expose research specialists to current ethical issues and social-change movements surrounding mental retardation and related disabilities. Students in the training program generally spend five academic years and full-time during the summers in study and research. They receive course work in core areas of developmental psychology, statistics and research methodology (often, completing a minor in quantitative methods), as well as in the experimental and theoretical literature in MR/DD. Our trainees are competent in basic research (e.g., cognition in individuals with retardation;parenting in high-risk mothers) and/or applied research (extending theoretically-driven treatment programs to homes and classrooms). Of the 58 graduates from our doctoral program, the vast majority hold academic or institutional positions in which they exert influence on the field of mental retardation. Currently, 33 percent of our trainees are from underrepresented minority groups. This proposal requests support for six predoctoral trainees for each of the next five years. They would become an ongoing part of a training program that is developing even greater strengths in family processes, quantitative methods, and educational interventions, building upon an established and long-standing base of MR/DD research interests. This training program is relevant to public health in terms of the production of new Ph.D.s who will research the causes and prevention of developmental delays in children and adolescence, especially those in poverty.
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