Fernando Viesca has a 24-year-old son who suffers from Angelman Syndrome, a little known chromosomal disorder that has left him with significant functional deficiencies. When Nando lived at home, his father took care of him full time, thus alleviating any worries about medical care. However, now that Nando lives in a group home, his father is no…

The study investigated the prevalence of fear and hyperacusis and the possible connections between fear, hyperacusis and musicality in a Swedish sample of individuals with Williams syndrome (WS). The study included 38 individuals and a cross-sectional design, with no matched control group. Two persons, who knew the participant well, completed a…

An increasing number of families are enrolling their children in out-of-home early childcare services. In addition, a growing number of community childcare programs are including children with developmental disabilities. While some studies have explored the effects of inclusion for preschool children with disabilities, there is little knowledge…

Developmental, learning, and behavioral disabilities are a significant public health problem. Environmental chemicals can interfere with brain development during critical periods, thereby impacting sensory, motor, and cognitive function. Because regulation in the United States is based on limited testing protocols and essentially requires proof of…

Background: This project examined the intermodal perception of temporal synchrony in 16 young children (ages 4 to 6 years) with autism compared to a group of children without impairments matched on adaptive age, and a group of children with other developmental disabilities matched on chronological and adaptive age. Method: A preferential looking…

Structured checklists have been used to supplement psychiatric assessment of children with normal intelligence, but for children with intellectual disability, only a few checklists exist. We evaluated the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) in the assessment of psychopathology in Finnish children with intellectual disability. The CBCL was completed by…

We evaluated the use of a video prompting procedure for teaching three adults with developmental disabilities to make popcorn using a microwave oven. Training, using a 10-step task analysis, was conducted in the kitchen of the participant's vocational training program. During baseline, participants were instructed to make popcorn, but were given…

A retrospective study was conducted in a clinic specialized in treating individuals with developmental disabilities to examine the effectiveness and tolerability of quetiapine in children and adolescents with pervasive developmental disorders. Ten consecutive outpatients (age = 12.0 [plus or minus] 5.1 years) treated with quetiapine (dose = 477…

The present study aims to assess the parental outcomes of an early intervention programme, designed to enhance the development of children zero to four years old with developmental disabilities through parental training. The parents of children with developmental disabilities who participated in the study (mothers, n = 29; fathers, n = 28)…

This investigation examined the effectiveness of a computer program in teaching sight word recognition to four young children with developmental disabilities. The intervention program was developed through a formative evaluation process. It embedded a constant-time-delay procedure and involved sounds, video, text, and animations. Dependent…

Background: Few previous studies have examined Antonovsky's (1979, 1987) "sense of coherence" (SOC) in parents of young children with developmental disability (DD). This study explored relationships between parental stress, SOC, social support, and health in parents of preschool children with and without DD. A secondary aim was to explore the…

Background: The superiority of language and communication skills in children and adults with Williams syndrome (WS) is currently being debated. Whilst there have been a number of reports of precursors of language in WS in children who have already developed language, there have not been many studies that have prospectively investigated precursors…

We tested the effects of multiple exemplar instruction (MEI) on the emergence of untaught mands or tacts of adjective-object pairs in a multiple-probe design across four students with autism/developmental disabilities. None of the students emitted either mands or tacts for three sets of three adjective-object pairs (word sets counterbalanced…

Functional communication training (FCT) is an intervention frequently used for students with developmental disabilities to reduce problematic behaviors and to increase prosocial behaviors. This intervention appears to be very effective when the communication responses trained are matched to the function of the student's problematic behaviors. In…

A multiple probe study across behaviors, replicated across students, assessed the effectiveness of simultaneous prompting (SP) in a small group teaching arrangement on teaching (a) to show the provinces, rivers, and border countries of Turkey on a map and (b) to expressively identify the names of the symbols which are usually used in math.…