Adults with developmental disabilities and educational researchers have identified many holes in the practices currently used to educate non-speaking youth with developmental disabilities, especially those with extensive support needs (Kapp, 2020; Taub, et al., 2017). While technology cannot provide a magical, sweeping fix to barriers to…

Play skills are a behavioral cusp as they provide the foundation for the development of other related skills in young children. Children with developmental disabilities often demonstrate significant delays in their play skills. When children do not engage in play at the same rates or in the same ways as their peers or siblings, their ability to…

Verb morphology difficulties have been widely attested in children with developmental language disorder (DLD) who speak English and other languages. This research contributes data on a variety of Arabic, a richly inflected Semitic language. The current study examined the production of subject-verb agreement morphology in three groups of 30…

The aim of this study was to examine genetic variations underlying the early neurodevelopmental outcome of developmental disabilities (DDs). The study cohort consisted of 191 children with DDs. Diagnosis was assessed at baseline and at the index age (72-84 months). Exome sequencing was conducted and putative risk variants were identified.…

The current study examines the efficacy of an 8-week pretend play intervention targeting social-cognitive abilities in children with Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS), ages 6-9. PWS is a rare disorder associated with various social, emotional, and cognitive challenges linked to pretend play impairments, and for which interventions are sparse. Nineteen…

Purpose: An internal model deficit is considered to underlie developmental coordination disorder (DCD); thus, children with DCD have an altered sense of agency (SoA), which is associated with depressive symptoms. Furthermore, the perception of action-outcome regularity is present in early development, is involved in the generation of SoA, and has…

Background and aims: Current evidence shows that children with developmental language disorder (DLD) benefit from spaced retrieval during word learning activities. Word recall is quite good relative to recall with alternative word learning procedures. However, recall on an absolute basis can be improved further; many studies report that fewer than…

Background: To build capacity among people with intellectual and developmental disabilities to become co-researchers they need the opportunity to learn about research. Method: An inclusive research team developed an online training to support people with intellectual and developmental disabilities to serve as co-researchers. Seven participants…

Children with developmental disabilities lack sufficient physical activity in their daily lives. The purpose of this study was to see if children with developmental disabilities who participated in stair-climbing exercises had better physical performance and health status than children with developmental disabilities who did not. This study…

This study aims to investigate the perception of phonological, grammatical, and semantic structures by 8 children (age range: 8;2-9;5) with developmental language disorders (DLD). Another 8 age-matched (age range: 8;4-10;0) typically developing (TD) children served as controls. The results demonstrated that children with DLD had lower performance…

Background: Rates of death and avoidable deaths are reportedly higher among people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. This study contributes to our understanding of how mortality and intellectual and development disabilities are associated. Method: General population and intellectual and developmental disabilities adult cohorts were…

Although many neurotypical children acquire untaught word-object relations incidentally from naturally occurring environmental experiences, many children with and without developmental disabilities require specific intervention. This study examined the effects of rotating listener (match and point) and speaker (tact and intraverbal-tact) responses…

Although approximately a third of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) also experience a mental health concern, caregivers often miss early identification of these issues. In this perspective piece, we present an outline for a mental health literacy program that can enhance existing training approaches for caregivers…

Lack of diversity in IDD research is typically conceptualized only in terms of (1) recruitment of samples that do not appropriately represent the sociodemographics of the population, or (2) the limited number of researchers from historically marginalized backgrounds. Critically, the field also suffers from over-reliance on perspectives and social…

In both research and practice, gaining assent from participants is an ethical imperative in applied behavior analysis. Recent guidance for including assent-based procedures has been provided in the literature (Breaux & Smith, 2023). However, limitations for decision-making when working with individuals who have developmental disabilities and…