Autism in children

Children with autism may present delays in the development of social,
communicative and cognitive skills. The behavioral features and patterns of development
exhibited across domains can be very distinctive (Volkmar, 1999). This diversity in the
expression of autism is what presents the greatest challenge for professionals and parents
looking for the most appropriate and effective intervention for this population.
Audio coaching intervention is one technology that has been used for over 50
years to train psychologists, medical interns, pre-service teachers, and parents of children
with behavioral challenges (Baum, 1976; Crimmins, Bradlyn, St. Lawrence, & Kelly,
1984; Giebelhaus, 1994; Goodman, Brady, Duffy, & Scott, in press; Hunt, 1980; Kahan,
2002; Korner & Brown, 1952; Lindell, 2001; Werba, Eyberg, Boggs, & Algina, 2006).
The intervention consists of a trainee receiving immediate feedback from a coach via a remote radio. However, the application of this technology has never been explored
specifically for training parents of children with autism.
The present study was designed to examine experimentally the effectiveness of
the audio coaching intervention on parents' interactions with their children with autism.
Three mothers and their children with autism participated in the study. The mothers
received immediate feedback from a coach on prompts designed specifically for their
children. Results showed that the audio coaching intervention was an effective medium to
teach the mothers how to deliver effective prompts and praise to their children. Results of
the intervention also generalized to tasks on which the mothers had never been trained,
and maintained well after the coaching was withdrawn. All three children showed an
increase in their engagement and completion of independent tasks and routines in their
homes after their mothers increased their use of more effective prompts and praise.

The examination of effective teaching strategies for young students with autism is necessary to successfully address the wide variety of skills deficits exhibited in students with this pervasive developmental disorder. The wide spectrum of cognitive functioning levels and autism severity levels found in this highly heterogeneous disorder make the development of sound instructional techniques a fundamental issue in best practices teaching with students with autism. The purpose of this study was to determine the differential effects of simplified speech discriminative stimuli and typical speech discriminative stimuli on response accuracy on an acquisition level discrimination skill using a discrete trial teaching format with prekindergarten age students with autism. The participants were four students chosen from a pool of students enrolled at The St. Mary's Preschool for Children with Autism, a charter school located in West Palm Beach, Florida. All students were between 3 and 5 years old and met eligibility criteria for special education in the autism category. The targeted instructional skill was a visual discrimination task that was to be exhibited upon presentation of a verbal stimulus and which required discrimination of the verbal stimulus in order to be performed correctly. Each participant was presented with an array of acquisition level picture vocabulary items under one of two instructional conditions: either a simplified speech discriminative stimulus condition or a typical speech discriminative stimulus condition. Each student received both instructional conditions with different but equivalent picture vocabulary items. The results indicated that there were differences in response accuracy under the two discriminative stimulus conditions. For participants with autism severity levels under 36 as measured by the Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS), criterion was met under both conditions, regardless of IQ. For participants with autism severity levels equal to or above 36 as measured by the CARS, response accuracy was higher under the simplified speech condition, regardless of IQ. One implication of this study is that students with more severe levels of autism may learn most effectively under simplified speech discriminative stimulus conditions and that students with less severe levels of autism may be able to learn effectively under either condition.

Students with Asperger's disorder manifest social, behavioral and pragmatic language impairments that result in their lower social acceptance. However, peer rejection in childhood is correlated with both current and future maladjustment, so it is important to investigate the causes of social rejection for children with Asperger's disorder. The first purpose of this study was to determine the relative effectiveness with which students with Asperger's disorder and typically developing students were able to interpret the social intentions of their peers. The second purpose of the study was to determine whether, with a given interpretation of social intention, there were differences in the social interaction strategies chosen by these two groups of students. Twenty students with Asperger's disorder and 20 typically developing elementary school students participated in this study. They viewed videotapes depicting social conflict situations and were interviewed to determine if they perceived the cause of a conflict, how they interpreted an antagonist's actions, and how they would respond in a similar situation. An independent samples t-test indicated that the typically developing group performed significantly better on the encoding of conflicts and benign intention cues. Further, the Asperger's disorder group rejected benign intention cues that they had encoded at a higher rate than their typically developing peers. A mixed ANOVA revealed that there were significant differences between groups for the rating of a peer as "not mean" based on cue type, with the Asperger's disorder group most likely to rate a peer as "not mean" after watching ambiguous vignettes and the typically developing group most likely to give this rating after watching benign vignettes. Additionally, a mixed ANOVA demonstrated that the Asperger's disorder group was significantly more likely to cite the use of aggressive strategies both against peer entry and peer provocation conflict types and when they had attributed a peer to be "mean."