Difficulties with social conversation can be a direct result of the social skills deficit in individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The popularity of hand-held devices and the development of commercial apps has expanded the scope of teaching social skills via this modality. This study extends an earlier pilot study in which a…

A substantial number of multicomponent interventions have been developed to address social functioning in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). For multicomponent interventions, identifying critical elements of the intervention related to behavior change is critical and may potentially improve the social validity of interventions. Such…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of a self-administered naming treatment for one individual, B.N., presenting with semantic variant primary progressive aphasia (svPPA) and a history of traumatic brain injury (TBI). Method: Naming treatment included components of Lexical Retrieval Cascade Treatment and was…

Research Findings: This study investigated the effectiveness of a home-based intervention in increasing the intrinsic reading motivation and Chinese oral vocabulary of minority South Asian children in Hong Kong. A quasi-experiment was conducted with 78 children (M[subscript age] = 51.54 months; control: 37 children, intervention: 41 children) and…

Aided language stimulation is an augmented input strategy that facilitates the expressive and receptive language skills of persons who require augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). The aim of this study was to determine and compare the acquisition of receptive vocabulary items during implementation of aided language stimulation with…

Discrete trial teaching (DTT) is a common teaching methodology used within intervention for autistics/individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Practice recommendations related to using DTT for receptive language instruction includes the desired size of the array of stimuli to be presented. Some recommendations include ensuring…

The current study examined the contexts in which a preschool teacher professional development intervention was more versus less effective in improving student outcomes. We used a fixed intercept, random coefficient (FIRC) modeling approach to explore the contextual characteristics inside and outside school walls that predicted differential…

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have difficulties with emotion recognition and a number of interventions have been designed to address this problem. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of video-based intervention (The Transporters) on emotion recognition in four children (aged 4-8 years old) with ASD who have limited…

The aim of this research is to evaluate the effects of the "Parental Supported Primary School Preparation" program, which is designed to increase the school adaptation levels of foreign children. The sample consists of foreign children aged 5-6 who attend preschool education in official independent kindergartens and kindergartens in the…

Purpose: Many children begin school with limited vocabularies, placing them at a high risk of academic difficulties. The goal of this study was to examine the effects of a vocabulary intervention program, Story Friends, designed to improve vocabulary knowledge of at-risk preschool children. Method: Twenty-four early-childhood classrooms were…

Purpose: This study examined the effects of an intensive voice treatment Lee Silverman Voice Treatment (LSVT LOUD) on children with Down syndrome (DS) and motor speech disorders. Method: A Phase I, multiple baseline, single-subject design with replication across nine participants with DS was used. Single-word intelligibility, acoustic measures of…

The ability to narrate past personal events is important for classroom participation and socio-emotional wellbeing. Although school-age children with Down syndrome show significant challenges producing personal event narratives, there is little research to guide personal narrative intervention. This study used a single subject experimental design…

Childhood socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with persistent academic achievement gaps, which necessitates evidence-based, scalable interventions to improve children's outcomes. The present study reports results from a replication and extension of a family-based training program previously found to improve cognitive development in lower-SES…

Early educational interventions, such as Head Start, have been widely recognized as an effective way to mitigate the negative effects of poverty on early learning and development (Camilli, Vargas, Ryan, & Barnett, 2010). In the past decade, there has been a strong expansion of early childhood programming, including Head Start and state-funded…

Preschool teachers from a high-poverty, urban school district were trained to implement Story Talk, a book reading intervention designed to increase children's vocabulary and language development using supportive materials and strategic individualized coaching. Thirty-five teachers were randomly assigned by site to the intervention (20) or the…