The single almost universally recognized aspect of creativity is novelty, often understood as novelty of products. However, determining which novel products are “truly” creative is difficult, because of the influence of practical and aesthetic/professional criteria. From a psychological point of view, it is more productive to study personal properties associated with creativity on the one hand and psychological processes which lead to the production of novelty on the other, especially with school children, since few of them produce widely acclaimed creative products. For this reason, creativity tests are most useful as indicators of potential. The tests can be divided into two groups: those concentrating on biographical and personal properties (creative person) and those which aim to measure creative thinking (creative process). Although a variety of tests of both kinds exists, their ability to measure real life creativity in a reliable way is open to doubt. This may well be because creativity involves a combination of psychological elements, with the result that its measurement requires new procedures that cross conventional test boundaries.

This paper argues that there is an inadequate supply of psychological tests that can be used for the assessment of intellectually gifted students. New psychological tests should be constructed for these purposes. The theories of experimental cognitive psychology which emphasize the role of capacity limitations and the importance of the construct of complexity provide a useful framework for the development of such new tests. Particularly promising has been the work with competing tasks, with tasks that place an increasing demandon the central processor (or working memory), and with tasks that systematically vary complexity and difficulty. Several examples of these new tasks are described.

Currently there is an increase in the number of articles published in scientific journals and in the popular scientific media that claim a biological basis for sex differences in cognition and in certain structures in the brain. It can be argued that there is over-emphasis on the differences rather than similarities between the sexes, but it is even more important to question the assumed causation of the differences. This paper discusses recent evidence for an interactive role of early experience and hormonal condition in determining sex differences in brain structure and function. Although early studies using rats were thought to show that the male sex hormone, testosterone, acts on the brain in early life to direct its differentiation into either the male or female form, it is know known that this result comes about indirectly by changing the mother’s behaviour towards the pups. The hormone does not act on the brain directly but rather it alters the environment in which the young animals are rasied and this, in turn, influences the development of the brain. Indeed, the brain is in dynamic register with its environment both during development and in adulthood. Other examples also show that old ideas of rigid biological determination of brain structure and function need to be laid aside.

The hypotheses for hormonal causation of sex differences humans rely heavily, if not exclusively, on the earlier interpretation of the experiments with rats, and there seems to be resistance to changing these notions based on the new discoveries. Apparently, there is strong pressure to cling on to biological determinist theories for sex differences in behaviour, and this has profound effects on social and educational policy. For example, biological determinism has been used to justify under representation of women in certain professions. Realisation of the dramatic effects that environmental stimulation and learning can have on the development of brain and behaviour leads us to an optimistic position for social change towards equality for women.

The purpose of this paper is to provide some preliminary data on the vocational interests of a sample of Australian high school pupils. Subjects (N=935) from five high schools were administered the Career Interest Test, which provides idiographic, forced-choice assessments of Outdoor, Practical, Scientific, Creative, Business, Office, and People Contact vocational interests across the three dimensions of vocations, academic preferences, and leisure activity choices. Interests are not related to age but there are significant sex differences as well as interaction effects, with males higher on Outdoor and Practical and females higher on Creative and People Contact categories. Data are provided on male and females preferences for each of the 63 paired choices (i.e., 126 items). The intercorrelation of the interests was assessed in terms of Holland's vocational typology. The validity of vocational/academic/activity measures of interests was reflected in comparisons with expressed occupational choices. It was argued that interests may be considered in terms of work-task preferences and that male-female differences in interests are consistent with Gotffredson's role of stereotypes in interest development. The implications for the assessment of vocational inlerests are discussed in terms of item content, format, scoring, and interpretation.

The results of independent field trials of the Individualised Classroom Environment Questionnaire are presented based on testing nearly 1500 high school students in NSW schools. The findings from this study are very similar to those originally presented by Fraser (1990) and hence constitute independent confirmatory evidence supporting its more widespread use in classroom research.

Lateralized brain function was originally thought to be unique to humans, but it has now been demonstrated to occur in many animal species, including primates, rats, dogs, and birds. Memory consolidation and retrieval in chicks is lateralized in neuroanatomical areas used and also in the times these areas are active. As the general patterns of memory encoding, elucidated in chicks, might also occur in humans, chicks are used as a model system for studying learning and memory. In addition, the detailed neurochemical investigation of imprinting has shown that the neurotransmitter glutamate plays an important role in the consolidation of early learning. Glutamate is also known to be important in neural plasticity, and a close link is now seen between early memory formation and the neural plastic events of early brain development. Behavioural testing using chicks has shown that glutamate intake can cause retardation of visual discrimination learning. This is of some concern given the common use of glutamate as a food additive. Clearly the role and indeed the presence of glutamate in the brain are finely balanced. This information is leading us to a greater understanding of the brain and its dynamic interaction with its environment. It also reinforces the increasing concerns regarding neural interactions with environmental roxins.

This paper reports a comparison between United States norms and the Australian Checknorms of the Vineland Adaptive Behaviour Scales, and the implications for the diagnosis of intellectual disability. One hundred and twenty-five children with developmental disabilities aged between 4 and 10 years received two separate diagnoses relating to intellectual disability. One was based on their level of intellectual functioning plus their Adaptive Behaviour Composite score calculated using the United States norms of the Vineland Adaptive Behaviour Scales. A second diagnosis was based on their level of intellectual functioning and an adjusted Adaptive Behaviour Composite score using the Australian Checknorms. The results indicated that there was a significant difference between scores and that this difference was clinically meaningful in 10.4% of the subjects. For a small and statistically non-significant number of children (five) the difference between scores led to a change in diagnosis from intellectually disabled to not intellectually disabled. Implications for the assessment of children with developmental disabilities are discussed.

Neuropsychological assessement of children with ADHD is reviewed in the light of recent research and clincial practice. Traditional psychometric approaches may fail to reveal dificiencies in such children and perfomance levels have to be considered with care due to teh potential confounding effects of attention deficit. Examination of qualitative features of preformance and extension of the range of assessment instruments to include those more sensitive to frontal systems dysfunction are proposed. The distinction between ADHD and specific learning disorders on the basis of neuropsychological assessment and the application in educational management is discussed.

Two studies investigated the influence of student behaviour and the gender of teacher and student respectively on teachers' decisions to refer children for specialist assistance. The first study examined the age, sex, and referral reason for 621 students referred to a major school support centre. The results indicated that twice as many boys were referred as girls, and that girls and boys were referred for different reasons. In the second study, 97 teachers were required to rank order the necessity for referral of four case studies presenting examples of either disruptive or non-disruptive behaviours. Boys' and girls' names were exchanged on alternate forms of the case studies. The findings indicated that neither the sex of the teacher nor the sex of the student in the case study hadany effect on teachers'rankings of the case studies. However, teachers viewed students displaying non-disruptive behaviour as significantly more in need of referral than students displaying disruptive behaviour. The implications of the findings of both studies are discussed in relation to the contrast between what teachers say about referrals and what they actually do, the access of girls to support services, and the need for further teacher education about criteria for referral.

This paper reviews the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale 4th Edition (SB-4) and compares and contrasts it with the instrument it supersedes, the Stanford-Binet 3rd Edition (L-M) (SB-3). Specific emphasis is placed on the use of the SB-4 with children and adolescents with intellectual disability. It can differentiate between intellectually disabled children and adolescents who have Down syndrome, and those who have other etiologies.

This paper summarises problems that university students, particularly those in the technically-oriented, professional disciplines, have when they write. Discussion centres on how strategic knowledge of discourse structure enhances what these students understand of processes associated with producing text and learning from it and how these understandings can be utilised to their benefit. The concept of top-level structure and advantages resulting from applying this concpets are discussed. Guidelines for incorporating the teaching of this knowledge into a technical writing course are suggested. Finally, there is a discussion of the relationship between this metacognitive knowledge and changes in student learning.