This study examined waiting times for diagnostic assessment of Autism Spectrum Disorder in 11 adult services, prior to and following the implementation of a 12 month change program. Methods to support change are reported and a multi-level modelling approach determined the effect of the change program on overall wait times. Results were…

Researchers and data analysts are sometimes faced with the problem of very small samples, where the number of variables approaches or exceeds the overall sample size; i.e. high dimensional data. In such cases, standard statistical models such as regression or analysis of variance cannot be used, either because the resulting parameter estimates…

Autistic traits are widely thought to operate along a continuum. A taxometric analysis of Adult Autism Spectrum Quotient data was conducted to test this assumption, finding little support but identifying a high severity taxon. To understand this further, latent class and latent profile models were estimated that indicated the presence of six…

Identifying effective, community-based specialized interventions for young children with autism spectrum disorder is an international clinical and research priority. We evaluated the effectiveness of the Early Start Denver Model intervention in a group of young children with autism spectrum disorder living in an Italian community compared to a…

Autistic people are better at perceiving details. Major theories explain this in terms of bottom-up sensory mechanisms or in terms of top-down cognitive biases. Recently, it has become possible to link these theories within a common framework. This framework assumes that perception is implicit neural inference, combining sensory evidence with…

Teacher stress and burnout have a detrimental effect on the stability of the teaching workforce. However, the possible consequences of teacher burnout on teaching quality and on student learning outcomes are less clear, especially in special education settings. We applied Maslach and Leiter's (1999) model to understand the direct effects of…

Increasing numbers of students with autism spectrum disorder are entering higher education. Their success can be jeopardized by organizational, social/emotional, and academic challenges if appropriate supports are not in place. Our objective was to evaluate the effectiveness of a support group model for university students with autism spectrum…

"Healthy Relationships & Autism" is a developmentally sequenced, manualized intervention intended for children and adolescents with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The curriculum is designed to facilitate healthy interpersonal relationships; three modules cover personal hygiene, sexual knowledge, and a variety of productive…

Background: Changes in reward processing are thought to be involved in the etiology of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), as well as other developmental disorders. In addition, different forms of therapy for ADHD rely on reinforcement principles. As such, improved understanding of reward processing in ADHD could eventually lead to…

National statistics indicate the ongoing challenge of catering for the unique needs of students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) within the context of inclusive education. Higher rates of difficulty and poorer outcomes are experienced by this cohort when compared to both the general population and others within the disability sector. The…

Researchers in the medical domain consider the double-blind placebo controlled clinical trial the gold standard. The data for these clinical trials are collected for a specifically defined hypothesis and there is very little in the realm of secondary data analyses conducted. The underlying purpose of this work is to demonstrate the value and…

This study examined the effectiveness of a novel intervention called "socio-dramatic affective-relational intervention" (SDARI), intended to improve social skills among adolescents with Asperger syndrome and high functioning autism diagnoses. SDARI adapts dramatic training activities to focus on in vivo practice of areas of social skill…

The authors sought to (a) identify interventions that immediately increased the oral reading fluency of students with or at risk for disabilities, (b) estimate to what extent these gains maintained over time, and (c) evaluate whether particular characteristics of students (e.g., gender, disability status) predicted their response to fluency…

In recent decades, educators have been faced with an ever-increasing number of students diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder that require specialized instruction to support learning and processing deficits. As students mature, the demand for individualization continues to be a priority. To address this need, educators must be equipped with…

Background: A number of disorders are associated with pragmatic difficulties. Instruments that can make subdivisions within the larger construct of pragmatics could be important tools for disentangling profiles of pragmatic difficulty in different disorders. The deficits underlying the observed pragmatic difficulties may be different for different…