A social skills training has previously resulted in positive improvements in social skills among children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This pilot study developed a play-based social skills training protocol for first-grade elementary children with ASD in Taiwan and determined its efficacy. Using a single-group…

Elevated caregiver strain is common and linked to poor health in parents of children with autism. Yet, little research has examined caregiver strain longitudinally and in geographically diverse samples of parents whose children have autism. This study aimed to (1) examine change in caregiver strain and (2) determine correlates of improved…

Parenting is a cognitive, emotional, and behavioral endeavor, where parents' control capacities, including executive functions and active control coping, help parents to guide and regulate interactions with their children; yet limited research investigates how these capacities are associated with parent-child affective regulation processes during…

This study aimed to identify different profiles of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) without intellectual disability (ID) and maternal factors characteristic of these profiles. Participants were 89 children between 7 and 11 years old and their mothers, distributed in two groups, 52 children with ASD and 37 with typical development (TD).…

Introduction: Parenting children with intellectual and developmental disabilities can be stressful; however, families with religious beliefs may have positive ways of viewing their family. This study explored the associations between religious and spiritual involvement (RSI), family characteristics, parent mental health, and child adaptive and…

Cognitive functioning has historically been used to predict adaptive outcomes of people with autism spectrum disorders; however, research shows that it is not a complete predictor. The current study explored whether emotion perception was a predictor of adaptive outcomes, and more specifically, hypothesized that emotion perception (Diagnostic…

This article presents an individual intervention combining cognitive-behavioral and behavior-analytic approaches to target severe emotion dysregulation in verbal youth with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) concurrent with intellectual disability (ID). The article focuses on two specific individuals who received the treatment within a therapeutic…

The literature offers no descriptions of the adaptive outcomes of people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) after natural disasters. Aim of this study was to evaluate the adaptive behaviour of participants with ASD followed for 1 year after their exposure to the 2009 earthquake in L'Aquila (Italy) compared with an unexposed peer group with ASD,…

Background: Parents of children with developmental disabilities (DD) face greater caregiving demands than parents of children without DD. There is considerable variability in parents' adjustment to raising a child with DD, however. In line with a strengths-based approach, this study explores coping strategies as potential mechanisms of resilience…

In this article we describe how using a visual, child-friendly measure of resilience in a randomised control trial (RCT), the Kgolo Mmogo (KM) project, resulted in representative insights on resilience in a mother-child relationship where the mother is HIV-positive. We used the existing psychological method Kinetic Family Drawing (KFD) to measure…

Despite the ubiquitous nature of parent education in autism treatment, relatively few studies directly address "how" parent education should be conducted. Given that the literature on parental well-being suggests that treatments that facilitate positive parental adaptation to their child's disability may be beneficial, this study…

Background: Psychological mechanisms may help to explain the variance observed in parental psychological adjustment in parents of children with intellectual disability (ID). In this study, parental locus of control and its role in relation to maternal psychological well-being was explored. Method: Questionnaires were sent to 91 mothers of children…

Background: Recent theories of stress and coping in parents of children with intellectual disabilities (ID) emphasize the importance of cognitive appraisals in influencing parents' levels of stress and their adaptations to difficulties presented by the children. This study investigated the relationships between parental cognitions, child…

Approximately 400,000 preschool children have a major neurodevelopmental disorder impacting on mobility, cognitive-adaptive, or communicative skills. As many as 1 in 3 children live at psychosocial disadvantage because of poverty, parental mental illness or substance misuse, or low parental educational (i.e. less than high school). In the past…