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Book Reviews/Comptes Rendus 205putes may arise when the plaintiff (a patient, orhis or her estate) alleges that compensable injurywas sustained by the patient because the facilityowed him or her a duty to provide treatment at areasonable standard of care, but fell below thatstandard. Before the court can apply legal prin-ciples to the case and render a judgement, it mustexamine the evidence presented by the partiesand determine "what happened." The facility'sdefence may depend upon the information con-tained in the patient records, but the records willbe admitted as evidence only if they com ply w iththe rules of evidence established in leading cases(and in many provinces codified by statute).Thus we see that many of the guidelines set outabove for maintaining sound patient records (therequirement of timely entries made by a personwith personal knowledge of the facts) are alsolegal requirements for the admissibility of therecord in court. Further, even if the record islegally adm issible, its credibility may come intoquestion if entries are not chronological, pagesare missing, pencil is used , or the author changespens in the middle of an entry, etc.

In addition to rules of general application forthe maintenance of patient records, the authorshave included checklists and sample forms togood effect. However, it is beyond the scope of a148-page volume concerned with the law acrossCanada to function as a comprehensive manualfor any particular facility. From province toprovince there are different statutes governingdifferent kinds of health care facilities. Whilestatutory and case references are carefully foot-noted, the authors are able only to select the lawof one or two prov inces for discussion, and referreaders to the health facility's lawyer to deter-

mine the law in their own jurisdiction.Non-lawyer readers wishing to know moreabout this small corner of the law w ill be pleasedwith the authors' lucid, easy style. Their work isfree of turgid legalese, although the exclusiveuse of the male pronoun to describe both m en andwomen is objectionable. Health care consumeradvocates w ill find a decidedly institutional biasin the book. The chapter on patients' access totheir own records repeats the standard argum entsfor keeping patients in the dark argumentsthat have been largely d iscredited w herever liber-alized patient access has been tried. The sample"pa tient's prope rty rele ase " form included in theappendix is drafted to relieve the hospital ofresponsibility for lost belongings even if theywere held in the hospital safe or were stolen byhospital staff.

The Canadian Law of Patient Records will bea welcome addition to the libraries of hospitalsand other health care facilities. It will be of par-ticular value as a reference work for administra-tors who must establish and revise their facility'swritten policies on the maintenance of records.Issues such as the length of time an institutionmust retain patient records, the microfilming ofrecords, computerization and record linkage, andliability risk management and incident reportsshould be addressed as part of any facility'spatient records policy. The authors devote a chapterto each of these topics. But the balance of thebook w ill be of interest to any health care profes-sional who makes entries in patient records.Dav id Giuffrida is a lawyer serving as a Psychi-atric Patient Advocate at Queen Street MentalHealth Centre, Toronto.

Donald D. Hammill, Nettie R. Bartel, and Gary Owen BunchTeaching C hildren with Learning and B ehavior ProblemsToronto: Allyn and Bacon, 1984 (527 pages)Reviewed by Anne Schlieper

Donald Hammill is Executive Director of the Society for Learning Disabilities andRemedial Education. He has taught at Wichita State and Temple universities and hasauthored several texts. Nettie R. Bartel is professor of Special Education at TempleUniversity. Gary Bunch is Director of the Graduate Program in Education at YorkUniversity.

Practitioners of special education draw heav-ily on A merican paradigm s and initiatives. Frommany points of view this attitude makes sense:social, linguistic, and cultural comm onalities aresufficiently strong to ensure a fair degree ofprofessional overlap. There are, however, large

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206 Canadian Psychology/Psychologie Canadienne, 1986, 27 :2and extremely significant areas in which thisinternational match is far from com plete. E duca-tion inevitably is concerned with issues thatinvolve national, regional, and even local condi-tions. This is particularly true of special educa-tion, which frequently must make provision forchildren whose exceptionalities are intermeshedwith the specifics of their environmental andcultural situation. Workers in special educationrespond to these issues as best they can with verylittle assistance in the form of Canadian publica-tions. The appearance, therefore, of a Canadianedition of a well-known, practical, problem-oriented text raised hopes that help might be athand. These hopes are not met: educators facedwith Canadian problems should not look to thisbook for Canadian answers.Teaching Children with Learning and Beha-vior Problems (Hammill and Bartel) was pub-lished in 1975 and re-edited in 1978 and 1982 as apractical reference book for classroom teachers.The 1984 "Canadian Edition" by Hammill,Bartel, and Bunch essentially consists of the1982 text with an introductory chapter by Bunchand with additions and deletions aimed at pro-viding a Canadian o rientation. The authors seemdeliberately to have kept the book's Canadianfeatures separate from the basic text. Not onlyare there two prefaces and two introductorychap ters: all textual additions are referenced in aseparate bibliography and separate subject andauthor indexe s. This referencing system is espe-cially irritating because it is not always po ssibleto guess from context whether a citation willappear in the "sta nd ard " or the Canadian listing.Finally, a useful list is given of Canadian sourcesfor tests and materials. The overall effect of thisformat is to emphasize the book's disconti-nuities and to remind the reader that the pre-existing text has not undergone a major revisionor re-integration.

Most of the book 's Canadian con tent is foundin Bunch's introductory chapter, "Special Edu-cation in Canada: An Overview." This chapter,the only one in the book w ith a Canadian focus,provides an informative survey of prevalence,legislative and administrative structures, deliv-ery of services, and current concerns such asmainstreaming, identification, language, andteacher training. The chapter's length (27 pages)precludes extensive discussion of any of theseissues: rather, problems are introduced andplaced in context. These problems are wellknown to teachers who have trained and worked

in any part of Canada. For instance, Bunch men-tions province-to-province differences in legisla-tion and funding, service delivery to Far Northcommunities and isolated areas, language-of-education problems, and lack of adequate testnorm s. Useful references, including several pro-vincial ministry pub lications, are provided. Thischapter w ould b e a relevant and rational pream-ble to a text that focused on Canadian problems.What actually follows, while of value in its ownright, is a disappointing non sequitur to Bunch'sintroduction.This text begins with a general statement onspecial education needs and continues withchapters on reading, spelling, handwriting,composition, mathematics, language, behaviourproblems, and perceptual-motor training. Thetraditional subject-area chapters are its strongestfeature and include excellent scope-and-sequence charts, useful information on identi-fication, and practical remedial suggestions. Thechapter on language achieves an impressivesumm ary presentation of a very large amount ofinformation but appears less relevant to mostclassroom problems related to language.Behaviour problems are approached via a usefulreview of behav ioural assessm ent and behaviour-management techniques and a rather uncriticaldescription of "projective" (dynamic) interven-tions. Th e coverage of perceptual-motor trainingis included only to caution teachers againstexpecting that such training will produce aca-demic gains. Overall the text is useful as a prac-tical reference but is beginning to show its age.Few references postdate 1980, there is no discus-sion of computer use in special education, cog-nitive interventions are mentioned only briefly,social skills diagnosis and training is neglected,and perceptual-motor training no longer seemsthe live issue it was a few years ago . A thoroughupdating would bring the text into step with thecurrent (international) scene and ensure its con-tinued use both here and elsewhere.

The disappointment felt on reading the textdid not arise from its to-be-expected need forupdating but from its lack of effective lateralexpansion into key areas of Canadian concern.Textual changes are minor and the vital problemareas defined by Bunch are mentioned in passingor receive no mention at all. For instance, thequestion of Canadian norms for tests developedin the U nited States is a complex and importantone and is especially pressing for those workingwith francophone children. Two paragraphs

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Book Reviews/Comptes Rendus 207(p. 37) are devoted to this topic. Identificationand remediation with Native groups, clearlyspelled out as a major concern in Bunch's intro-duction, is accorded passing mention in one ofthe two paragraphs on page 37. A third issueraised by Bunch is the provision of special ser-vices in the language of instruction to childrenstudying in a second language. T his issue, in myopinion a highly important one, affects morechildren than many of us realize. In 1983/84, forinstance, over 100,000 children were enrolled informally designated French Immersion pro-grammes (Commissioner of Official Languages,1984). Many others attended regular French orEnglish classes while they learned their languageof instruction. Second-language special educa-tion not only is an area filled with absorbingchallenges, it is an area in which typically wemake decisions and take actions based on incom-plete or conflicting guidelines. 1 found no men-

tion of this area after the introductory chapter.In summary, this ill-assorted book offers astimulating Canadian-focused introduction to aworthwhile but rather time-worn text that doesnot cover Canadian issues in any meaningfulway. A better book might have resulted from anupdating for the international market rather thanfrom this attempt at Canadianization. Our needfor material that addresses the specifically Cana-dian aspects of special education is as great asever.

ReferenceCommissioner of Offical Languages. (1984). Annual report1983. Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services Canada.Anne Schlieper is the senior psychologist in thePsychoeducational Programme, PsychologyDepartment, Children's Hospital of EasternOntario.

Charles BoutonLa neurolinguistiqueParis: Presses universitaires de F rance, 1984 (128 pag es)Compte rendu par Josiane F. Hamers

Do cteur es Lett res et professeur de linguistique, Charles Bouton enseigne depuis denombreuses annees dans diverses universites nord-americaines, en plus d'effectuer destravaux a ihopital Sainte-Justine de Montreal.Dans cet ouvrage d'une collection de vulgari-sation scientifique Charles Bouton introduit lelecteur a des notions elementaires en neurolin-

guistique. Dans une premiere partie, il presenterevolution historique de l'interet pour lestroubles du langage, evolution qui a mene a lacreation de la neurolinguistique en tant que disci-pline lorsque la reflexion linguistique et la re-flexion neurophysiologique ont pu se rencontrer.La deuxieme partie du volume traite de la nais-sance de la neurolinguistique moderne: ledeuxieme chapitre de cette deuxieme partiedonne une description de l'apport neurolinguis-tique a differents niveaux d'analyse linguistiquealors que le chapitre suivant decrit le problemeimportant de la dominance cerebrale. La troi-sieme partie de l'ouv rage , intitule Maintenant laNeurolinguistique Appliquee, traite des troublesdu langage chez l'enfant et chez l'adulte aussique de 1'analyse neurolinguistique chez le bi-lingue.

Dans un domaine aussi vaste que celui de laneurolinguistique, l'auteur a le merite d'avoirtente un tour d'horizon en 126 pages. Ce n 'etait,certes, pas une tache facile et il n'est pas eton-nant de constater que plusieurs aspects de laneurolinguistique n'ont pas ete abordes. Unefaiblesse ev idente de l'ouvrage me semble appa-raitre dans la derniere partie du livre ou une tropgrande place est faite aux aspects pathologiquesde la neurolinguistique, alors qu'il est peu faitmen tion des recents developpem ents sur le fonc-tionncmcnt neurolinguistique de l'individu nor-mal a l'exception de l'individu bilingue.

Une autre faiblesse de cet ouvrage est qu'ildonne l'impression d'avoir ete ecrit il y a quatreans et non en 1984; en effet, tres rares sont lestravaux cites apres 1980, ils ne depassent pas1981 et la majorite des travaux cites s'arretent a1977-1978. Plus genant encore, ce retard parrapport aux publications recentes entraine le faitque dans la majorite des discussions fondamen-