Background: Communication impairments are a leading concern for parent caregivers of individuals with rare neurodevelopmental disorders (RNDDs). Clinical trials of disease modifying therapies require valid and responsive outcome measures that are relevant to individuals with RNDDs. Identifying and evaluating current psychometric properties for…

Purpose: Telemedicine approaches to autism (ASD) assessment have become increasingly common, yet few validated tools exist for this purpose. This study presents results from a clinical trial investigating two approaches to tele-assessment for ASD in toddlers. Methods: 144 children (29% female) between 17 and 36 months of age (mean = 2.5 years, SD…

Early childhood is a critical period characterized by rapid development of motor and language skills. Reliably assessing motor and language development in early childhood is difficult, and there is a lack of agreement on measurement tool use. This scoping review aims to identify measurement tools used to examine motor and language skills in…

Background: There is growing understanding of the potential benefits of a multi-method approach to accurately capture language skills of children on the autism spectrum. Tools such as Language ENvironment Analysis (LENA) provide an efficient means of capturing and analysing early child vocalizations (CVs) and the language learning environment.…

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder present with difficulties in social communication, restricted interests or behaviors and other co-morbidities. About 2 to 10% of cases of autism have a genetic cause, and Fragile X Syndrome (FXS) is reported in 0 to 6.5% of individuals with autism. However, the FXS and premutation prevalence among Filipino…

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a rapid acceleration of innovative research on health services delivery, including real-world clinical implementation and evaluation of tele-assessment for the diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder. Extending this promising work, the present study examined clinical characteristics and…

This study compared simultaneous prompting with an error correction procedure for teaching three children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder expressive labels. Using a parallel treatment design nested within a multiple probe design, the researchers taught each participant how to expressively label pictures of sports teams or cartoon…

Working with a post-secondary student with intellectual disability, an adapted alternating treatments design was used to compare sight-word acquisition across three computer-delivered learning trial interventions: one with fixed 5-s response intervals, another with fixed 1-s response intervals, and a third with self-determined intervals. Visual…

A high-quality education in the social studies is recommended by the National Council for the Social Studies to promote civic competence and democratic participation for school system graduates. Currently, limited empirical information exists to inform social studies instruction for students with significant intellectual disability (SID),…

Purpose: Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and complex communication needs are increasingly taught to use tablet-based speech-generating devices (SGDs). An important issue in designing such interventions is the selection of an appropriate format for displaying vocabulary. The purpose of this study was to determine (a) whether young…

This study examined the effects of an intervention that integrated peer-mediated instruction (PMI) with augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) using speech-generating devices (SGDs). Nine trained peer tutors without disabilities taught science concepts and modeled use of SGDs following a script to three elementary school students with…

This study evaluated the effects of progressive time delay (PTD) to teach four elementary students with intellectual disability on how to self-instruct using a video activity schedule. A single-case multiple probe across participants design with a multiple probe across environments design for each participant was used to assess the generalization…

Background: With rates of autism diagnosis continuing to rise, there is an urgent need for effective and efficient service delivery models. Pivotal Response Treatment (PRT) is considered an established treatment for autism spectrum disorder (ASD); however, there have been few well-controlled studies with adequate sample size. The aim of this study…

The EarlyBird programme is a group-based psychoeducation intervention for parents of young children with autism. Although it is widely used in the United Kingdom, the evidence base for the programme is very limited. Using a mixed method, non-randomised research design, we aimed to test (1) the acceptability of the research procedures (recruitment,…

The provision of reinforcement to increase desired behaviors is a crucial element of behavior analytic intervention for individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Formal preference assessments, like the multiple stimulus without replacement procedure (MSWO), are often used to determine reinforcers used during intervention. While…