It was formed in 1987 by the merger of Analysis and Intervention in Developmental Disabilities and Applied Research in Mental Retardation, which were established in 1981 and 1980, respectively.

In early February of 2015, the journal's founding editor-in-chief Johnny Matson (Louisiana State University) was accused of excessively citing his own works and thereby inflating his citation counts.

[3][4] An investigation by Elsevier came to the conclusion that Matson had used his position to have papers published without proper peer review that used assessment batteries developed by himself and sold through a company registered in his wife's name, failing to report this conflict of interest.

[5] Matson was also criticized for publishing a large number of his own papers, citing his own work, in these journals.

[5] Effective March 2015 Elsevier appointed Dagmara Dimitriou as the new editor-in-chief[5][6] and updated the journal's editorial policies.