Despite Asperger's Syndrome (AS) becoming a widely recognized disorder on the pervasive developmental spectrum, surprisingly few studies have assessed the utility of psychosocial and/or pharmacological treatments for children with AS. Further, studies have not examined the effects of treatment on disruptive behavior problems commonly exhibited by…

Background: There is frequently great concern about the dangerousness of deinstitutionalized men with intellectual disabilities who have been institutionalized because they are considered to be at high risk for the commission of serious antisocial acts or sexual offending. Unfortunately, there is little information on whether changes in the…

Background: The views of both service users with intellectual disability and their support staff on the use of physical interventions are largely unknown. The research that does exist describes a largely negative pattern of responses. The present study aimed to explore the personal impact of receiving and implementing physical interventions, and…

This study of 282 dyads examines early- and mid-adolescents' perceptions of friendship quality and their association with daily disagreements, self- and mother reports of behaviour problems, and school grades. Actor and partner analyses identify unique associations between perceptions of friendship quality and perceptions of daily conflict. Actor…

Concern about the growth in adolescent problem behaviours (e.g. delinquency, drug use) has led to increased interest in positive youth development, and a surge in funding for "after school programs." We evaluate the potential of youth sport programs to foster positive development, while decreasing the risk of problem behaviours.…

Becoming a teen father can lead to negative consequences for both the young father and his offspring. It is important to understand the process that leads some young men into fatherhood while others delay it until they are more developmentally ready. One possibility is that becoming a teen father is part of a more general deviant lifestyle. This…

While the majority of students in schools tend to respond to effective general academic instruction and proactive schoolwide discipline systems, some continue to exhibit intense and chronic problem behaviors, even in the best schools. For these students, schools are highly variable in their ability and capacity to provide accurate and durable…

A deinstitutionalization research project in which residents from the largest institution in Queensland, Australia, were relocated after a government decision to close the center was described. Outcomes of relocation into community living for adults with severe mental retardation, many of whom were older (over 40 years) and had been…

Comic Strip Conversations is a positive behavioral support strategy that has been used effectively to improve the social skills of students with autism. Research on the effectiveness of this strategy was extended to four students with other mild/moderate learning, cognitive and behavioral disabilities. Two elementary teachers used Comic Strip…

The author found it very satisfying to reread "Toward a technology of 'nonaversive' behavioral support," written in 1990 by Rob Horner and seven of his colleagues. Their predictions of the critical themes for advancing positive behavior support (PBS) ring true. Fifteen years have passed since the publication of this article, and much has happened…

We examine how changes in maternal work hours affect adolescent children's school participation and performance outcomes using data from interviews in 1998 and 2001 with 1,700 women who in May 1995 were welfare-reliant, single mothers of adolescents living in disadvantaged neighborhoods in four urban counties. We find unfavorable effects of…

This is a comparison study of 244 early adolescents attending sixth grade at either an urban elementary school or an urban middle school. Utilizing four data collection instruments, it compares the adolescent groups' degrees of loneliness, levels of positive self-concept, academic competence, problem behaviors, and social skills. Results indicate…

Maternal depression in families having a child with a disability has been the subject of considerable research over the past 25 years. This review was designed to describe the literature on maternal depression, critique its research methodology, identify consensus findings across studies, and make recommendations for future research. A particular…

Expressed emotion (EE) is a measure of the affective relationship between two people characterized by criticism, hostility, and emotionally over-involved attitudes. Outside of the field of intellectual disabilities, there has been considerable interest in EE as an environmental marker that explains variance in the severity and/or course of a…

Background: The Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) was used by a city school district (approximately 11,000 students) in the upper Midwest to monitor trends for nutrition and physical activity (PA) behaviors both within and between years and to compare with national 2003 data. Methods: Independent random samples were obtained in 1999 (387 middle…