The issues of how to educate the hyperactive child effectively, and to counsel parents in useful coping and remediation strategies, are of central, ongoing concern. As we are all aware, however, hyperactivity is an amorphous entity, and research has produced as many names for the problem as it has recommendations for diagnostic and treatment approaches. This paper briefly reviews aspects of the current debate over which conceptual model is best suited to describe the disorder, and argues that a clear understanding is currently emerging from information processing analyses of the pattern of impairment in these children.

Parental involvement as tutors or behaviour problem-solvers with regular school children is increasing. This paper sketches some reasons for this and outlines a set of principles for working with parents for use by practitioners.

Psychologists working with families experiencing serious parent adolescent conflict often find themselves being asked about community views regarding the ages at which adolescents ought be permitted to engage in a range of behaviours. Given the general lack of normative data in this regard, the current study has attempted to provide some. Data from two studies involving families of children attending a total of 17 Victorian schools are reported, and discussion is given to the use that might be made of such data by psychologists working with families experiencing parental adolescent conflict.

What do adolescents “do” in their spare time? What activities do they engage in when not at school or in employment? Questions such as these are continually of importance since planning and provision of facilities for the pursuit of leisure activities for individuals of all ages are required. Society must make available resources and expertise for leisure time pursuits for adolescents, ranging from sporting activities to discos, from educational programmes to providing places where teenagers can meet and talk away from home.

Firstly however, two brief definitions are needed – one of “interest” and one of “leisure”. Dusek, Kermis and Monge (1979) define interest as “(being) related to, and may be the end result of, attention toenvironmental events that stimulate curiosity which, in turn, leads to the application of already acquired skills” (p.44). Connell, Stroobant, Sinclair, Connell and Rogers (1975) claim that “an interesting person is, basically, an interested person” (p.167), implying that to have a wide education and a wide range of interests enhances one as a person. Clearly therefore, it would be to our (and society's) advantage to make provision for stimulating leisure pursuits and encouraging many different recreational interests in our adolescents. The breadth and depth of action and motivation established before adulthood must then be beneficial to society in the long term.

Growing interest in social skills training has resulted in the development of a wide range of programmes. Concurrently, a wealth of conceptual and empirical studies has appeared in the literature. This paper presents a model of social skills training, based on recent research, which can be applied in a wide variety of settings. Initial assessment, training format and outcome evaluation are all discussed. In addition, two alternative training strategies are considered which contrast cognitive and behavioural variables as factors for increasing the probability of generalization. Finally, the issue of maintenance is also considered.

The study of interactions between anxiety and other performance related variables was first carefully documented with the Manifest Anxiety Scale (Taylor, 1951) used in paired associate learning tasks. Reviews of this literature have shown that high anxious subjects usually perform significantly better on easy tasks, and worse on difficult tasks, than low anxious subjects (Taylor, 1958).

Later research workers concerned with anxiety in education broadly adopted interactionist approaches when confronted by consistently low negative relationships between anxiety and attainment (Cronbach & Snow, 1977; Gaudry, 1977).

While the role of non-ability intrapersonal variables including personality traits and motivational dynamic factors has been well documented in numerous studies, the relationship of transient states to cognitive performance has been relatively neglected. Boyle (1983b, 1986) demonstrated that emotional states powerfully influence cognitive learning outcomes under conditions of stressful activation. However, under neutral, non-emotive conditions, it remained unclear what role if any was played by mood states in cognitive learning. The failure to employ change measures in these studies may have obscured the likely influence of emotions on cognitive performance in the neutral situation. This study re-examines the relationship of moods with cognitive learning performance using state-change scores rather than single-occasion mood-state scores as the basis for predicting cognitive learning outcomes.

In Australia, compared to the United States and Britain, guidance officers havea relatively undeveloped and insecure professional identity. They are an emerging professional group with an uncertain allegiance to both teaching and psychology. While their role has many shared characteristics with that of their overseas counterparts (school psychologists and educational psychologists), compared to these groups, requirements for postgraduate training are limited and formal registration and certification vary from state to state. Moreover, until recently, there was neither a national professional organization, nor a journal to represent their interests. It is therefore not surprising that, despite considerable criticism of the guidance officer role, there has been little published about its future. While some of the broader issues affecting the profession have been raised recently by Haskell (1984) and Rice (1984), for the most part discussion has focussed on issues like training and certification (e.g., Keats, 1985), testing (e.g., de Lemos, 1985) and counselling (e.g., Frydenberg, Lee & Mckenzie, 1985; McMullen, 1984) in a relatively parochial and uncritical manner.