Challenging behavior exhibited by young children with neurodevelopmental disabilities is known to negatively affect their optimal development and families' quality of life. Although some support exists for English-speaking parents of children with autism who live in high-resource countries, it is scarce for others. Such disparity may also be…

Background: Previous research suggests parents' level of satisfaction with their child's school experience is highly variable. The present author explored school satisfaction in a Canadian sample of parents of children with severe and often complex developmental disabilities. Method: Parents of 185 children completed questionnaires regarding their…

The Preschool Life Skills program is an intervention package designed to teach functional skills to prevent problem behavior in typically developing children. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the effects of the instructional package (renamed "Life Skills") with children with developmental disabilities. The program…

Telehealth is increasingly being employed to extend the reach of behavior analytic interventions to families of children with developmental disorders who exhibit problem behaviors. In this preliminary study, we examined whether function-based behavior analytic interventions could be delivered via telehealth over 12 weeks to decrease problem…

A high proportion of people with developmental disabilities engage in challenging behavior compared to the general population (McClintock, Hall, & Oliver, 2003). Functional Communication Training (FCT) is an is an evidence-based intervention to address challenging behavior (Heath et al., 2015), but many people remain unable to access effective…

Richman et al. ("J Appl Behav Anal" 48:131-152, 2015) completed a meta-analytic analysis of single-case experimental design data on noncontingent reinforcement (NCR) for the treatment of problem behavior exhibited by individuals with developmental disabilities. Results showed that (1) NCR produced very large effect sizes for reduction in…

Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and/or intellectual and developmental disabilities (DD) often struggle with behavior management and emotion-regulation (ER). In this manuscript, we describe the results of a chart review examining a group treatment program designed to address ER deficits in youth with ASD and/or DD. The intensive…

Students with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) require intensive supports, including those that target behavior, to make progress on literacy goals. In this study, we investigated whether computer-assisted instruction (CAI) may be one effective method to decrease challenging behavior and increase academic engagement. Participants…

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act requires that functional behavior assessments be conducted under certain circumstances for students with disabilities. Functional assessments may include indirect assessments (e.g., rating scales, interviews), direct-descriptive assessments (e.g., direct observations with conditional…

The DSM-5 features level of support ratings for social communication (SC) and restrictive and repetitive behaviors (RRB) for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We contrasted cognitive, adaptive, and autism severity scores across SC and RRB groups for 158 individuals with ASD diagnosed in a developmental disabilities clinic. Roughly…

Background: Individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities are more likely to engage in problem behaviours than peers with typical development. The purpose of this study was to provide descriptive and qualitative information about problem behaviours in children with fragile X syndrome (FXS) and how families respond to these…

Purpose: Research is only beginning to address the extent to which evidence-based parenting programmes have utility and merit within populations of children and families with neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD). The purpose of this paper is to evaluate a parent-focused intervention for families who have a child with a NDD and investigate whether…

Young children with developmental delays, neurodevelopmental disorders, or other developmentally atypical presentations are increasingly referred to the mental health system of care because of symptoms that include prolonged tantrums, aggression, anxiety, and sensory processing difficulties. Concerning behaviors can be viewed as constitutional…

The United States has a long, complicated history with sex education as, often, different stakeholders advocate dissimilar educational frameworks (Irvine, 2004). Although controversies remain in defining the boundaries of sex education, there is a movement both nationally and internationally to define sex education comprehensively (Haberland &…

People with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) are frequent users of health services. We examined how their service utilization of emergency department (ED), inpatient hospitalization, and primary care physicians changed as they transitioned from fee-for-service to Medicaid managed care (MMC). Our results showed that MMC reduced the…