States have increasingly transitioned Medicaid enrollees with disabilities from fee-for-service (FFS) to Medicaid Managed Care (MMC), intending to reduce state Medicaid spending and to provide better access to health services. Yet, previous studies on the impact of MMC are limited and findings are inconsistent. We analyzed the impact of MMC on…

Parents report that the process of getting an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis is arduous, lengthy, and fraught with difficulties. This analysis of the Pathways survey data set examined the experiences of parents who said, at the time of the survey, that their child currently had ASD compared with parents who said, at the time of the…

Background: Developmental language disorder (DLD) is common in children, but little is known about its association with quality of life (QoL) in middle childhood. QoL is a complex construct, aligning with an individual's sense of well-being and is related to functional limitations associated with DLD. Biopsychosocial models of disability account…

Introduction: The presence of comorbid mental illness in individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) has been shown to have additional negative impact on parents and caregivers. However, the impact of such dual diagnoses on typically developing siblings has yet to be examined. Methods: Parents and typically developing…

We compared loss and gain in communication from 1 to 2 years in children later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (n = 41), language impairment (n = 110) and in children with typical language development at 7 years (n = 831). Participants were selected from a prospective population cohort study of child language (the Early Language in…

Given that early caregiver concerns may be different for children who go on to receive a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder versus another developmental disability, early caregiver concerns may differ for girls. Using a community-based sample of children (n = 241), we examined the extent to which gender differences may be related to caregiver…

Executive functions are crucial for efficient daily functioning. However, the contribution of executive functions to the participation in daily life activities of children, have been inadequately studied. The study aimed to examine the unique contribution of executive functions, beyond motor ability, to the diversity and independence of children's…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of supported employment intervention on the employment outcomes of transition-age youth with intellectual and developmental disabilities served by the public vocational rehabilitation system using a case-control study design. Data for this study were extracted from the Rehabilitation Services…

To evaluate evidence for motor impairment specificity in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Children completed performance-based assessment of motor functioning (Movement Assessment Battery for Children: MABC-2). Logistic regression models were used to predict group membership. In the models…

This methodological review draws attention to the challenges faced by intellectual and developmental disabilities researchers in the appropriate design and analysis of group comparison studies. We provide a brief overview of matching methodologies in the field, emphasizing group-matching designs used in behavioral research on cognition and…

Italian developmental dyslexic readers show a striking length effect and have been hypothesised to rely mostly on nonlexical reading. Our experiments tested this hypothesis by assessing whether or not the deficit underlying dyslexia is specific to lexical reading. The effects of lexicality, word frequency and length were investigated in the same…

Motor and social difficulties are often found in children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and with developmental coordination disorder (DCD), to varying degrees. This study investigated the extent of overlap of these problems in children aged 7-10 years who had a diagnosis of either ASD or DCD, compared to typically-developing controls.…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the concurrent validity of subtests on the "Comprehensive Assessment of Spoken Language" (CASL) by comparing them with the assessment of communication and social skills on the "Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales" ("Vineland"). The participants were 35 children and…

The comparison of cognitive and linguistic skills in individuals with developmental disorders is fraught with methodological and psychometric difficulties. In this paper, we illustrate some of these issues by comparing the receptive vocabulary knowledge and non-verbal reasoning abilities of 41 children with Williams syndrome, a genetic disorder in…

The quality of life construct has gained prominent attention in human services over the last 20 years. We investigated whether quality of life differences exist between adults with developmental disabilities and the general population. Differences were found in scales measuring well-being and decision-making as well as other more specific…