The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (2004) allows alternate pathways for school districts to identify and classify students with a specific learning disability (SLD). Response to Intervention (RtI) is one of the frameworks schools can use when eliminating the use of the discrepancy model. The premise of RtI posits that…

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a prevalent neurodevelopmental condition for which no prenatal or early life screening tests exist. Early life recognition of ASD is key to accessing behavioral intervention when brain plasticity is at its peak. The purpose of our study was to systematically review the literature researching parental perspectives…

According to the SEND Code of Practice (DfE, 2015), cognition and learning difficulties encompass a wide range of needs, including general and specific learning difficulties. These difficulties affect various areas of learning including literacy, numeracy, and the acquisition of subject-specific knowledge and skills and may be linked to underlying…

This rapid review, commissioned by the Department for Education (DfE) and conducted from February to July 2024, aimed to identify the best available evidence to guide early years practitioners in supporting children aged 0-5 with speech, language, and communication needs (SLCN), specifically stammering, speech sound issues, and language…

Asperger's Syndrome was introduced as a separate diagnostic category in the DSM-4 (1994). Its subsequent absorption into autism spectrum disorder in the DSM-5 (2013) led to vigorous debate and concerns about the loss of the unique Asperger's identity. Existing research has identified that adults previously diagnosed with Asperger's have expressed…

The heterogeneous nature of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) makes accurate diagnosis challenging. Best practice assessments in schools can open pathways to appropriate interventions and educational placements for those with ASD, as well as help identify a student's strengths. There are various tools used in school settings to assess autism. In this…

Whereas it is well documented how parents experience the diagnostic process of their child with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), less is known about parental experiences with the course of the early identification process and first steps in receiving care for their child with ASD symptoms. This mixed-method study investigated these experiences as…

The Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers, Revised with Follow-up was validated on a population sample in Reykjavik, Iceland. The participants (N = 1585) were screened in well-child care at age 30 months and followed up for at least 2 years to identify autism cases. The sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values were…

Learning disorders can have adverse impacts on children and families extending beyond the academic skills deficits. The goal of the present study was to assess the impact of the school's response, following an independent evaluation, for child and family school-related quality of life (QOL). We hypothesized that a positive school response would be…

Clinical judgement is a crucial part of autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) assessments. This study aims to harness insights from psychology and sociology to explore clinical perspectives and assessment practices of autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Qualitative interviews were conducted with health care…

Extensive research has demonstrated the importance of struggling reader identification in monolingual children Compton et al. ("Journal of Educational Psychology," 102, 327-340, 2010). However, very few studies have explored identification of struggling readers in bilinguals. The aim of this study was to investigate (1) the overlap of…

An autism diagnosis in adulthood can increase women's self-compassion and inform appropriate supports. This study explored what helped and hindered autistic women when accessing an adulthood autism diagnosis in Australia. Ten autistic women diagnosed as adults within the past 5 years participated in a semi-structured interview about their…

The objective of this study was to determine the clinical features that moderate a later age at ASD diagnosis in females in a large sample of females with ASD. Within two large and independent ASD datasets (>20,000 females), females were first diagnosed with ASD 14-months later relative to males. This later age at diagnosis was moderated by a…

Males are more likely to be diagnosed with autism than females, and at earlier ages, yet few studies examine sex differences in screening. This study explored sex differences in psychometric properties, recommended cutoff scores, and overall scores of the Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers, Revised, with Follow-Up. Participants were 28,088…

The current study sought to investigate whether word properties can facilitate the identification of developmental language disorder (DLD) in sequential bilinguals by analyzing properties in nouns and verbs in L2 spontaneous speech as potential DLD markers. Measures of semantic (imageability, concreteness), lexical (frequency, age of acquisition)…