Like other developmental disorders such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, specific language impairment and dyslexia, there is no shortage of debate surrounding the condition of Developmental Coordination Disorder. The present article takes a global view of many of these debatable issues, starting with definition and terminology, moving…

Problem behavior is a major barrier to successful community integration for people with developmental disabilities. Recently, there has been increased interest in identifying contextual factors involving setting events and discriminative stimuli that impact the display of problem behavior. The authors previously developed the "Contextual…

Emotion recognition is a basic skill that is thought to facilitate development of social and emotional competence. There is little research available examining whether therapeutic or instructional interventions can improve the emotion recognition skill of young children with various developmental disabilities. Sixteen preschool children with…

The present study was designed to determine whether parents (three mothers and one grandmother) could implement CBI with SP reliably for teaching community skills to their children and the effects of parent-delivered intervention on teaching the community skills. Maintenance and generalization effects of the intervention were also analyzed in the…

This study is a replication of Sundberg and Sundberg (1990) that compared topography-based verbal behavior with selection-based verbal behavior in terms of acquisition, accuracy, and testing for the emergence of a new verbal relation. Participants were three typical children and three developmentally disabled persons with autism. The study sought…

There is growing interest in the role that physical illness and pain might play in exacerbating problem behavior in individuals with developmental disabilities. Assessment of these factors, however, is often difficult since many individuals have minimal verbal communication skills. In response to this difficulty, we developed a sequential method…

The aim of the present study was investigate the relationship between working memory and reading and mathematical skills in 55 children diagnosed with developmental coordination disorder (DCD). The findings indicate a pervasive memory deficit in all memory measures. In particular, deficits observed in visuospatial short-term and working memory…

This paper focuses on "technologies for voice" that are related to the self-determination of youth with developmental disabilities. The authors describe a self-determination model that values family-focused, community-referenced pedagogies employing "new media" to give voice to youth and their families. In line with the adage that a picture is…

Adults with ID/DD live in increasingly small community settings, where the risk of loneliness may be greater. We examined self-reported loneliness among 1,002 individuals with ID/DD from 5 states in relation to community residence size, personal characteristics, social contact, and social climate. One third reported being lonely sometimes and one…

Autism has been associated with atypical face and configural processing, as indicated by the lack of a face inversion effect (better recognition of upright than inverted faces). We investigated whether such atypical processing was restricted to the face or extended to social information found in body postures. An inversion paradigm compared…

We evaluated a video prompting and fading procedure for teaching three adults with developmental disabilities to wash dishes. Video prompting involved showing video clips depicting each step of the task. All three adults reached 90-100% correct when video prompting was implemented. Following acquisition, video prompting was withdrawn, but…

The purposes of this article are (a) to describe a structured protocol for assessing request, reject, and repair behavior of young children with autism spectrum disorders and other developmental disabilities and (b) to highlight the importance of assessing these communicative behaviors. These three communicative functions are basic building blocks…

Toxic exposures during pregnancy and early childhood continue to play an important role as a preventable cause of neurodevelopmental disabilities in the U.S. and around the world. Identifying and eliminating these toxins should be a priority, but the task is made exceedingly difficult due to the severe limits of scientific knowledge in this area…

Fertility rates have fallen dramatically around the world. In some countries, there are no longer enough children being born to replace adult populations. The disappearance of children is a matter of concern matched only by fears that childhood is becoming too structured or not structured enough, too short or too long, or just simply too different…

A sequence of behaviors consisting of appropriate responses, inappropriate responses, or a combination of both can be linked together in a behavior chain. Several operant processes may disrupt behavior chains. For example, one or more members of the behavior chain may be affected when reinforcement is withheld for the last response in the chain…