Play and playfulness have a key role in children's development. Not enough is known about the playfulness of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and its relationship to children's behavioural problems, as well as the role of caregiver behaviours during play in this relationship. The present study examines the moderating role of teachers'…

Although the early behaviors associated with autism spectrum disorder have been well characterized, many behaviors are also commonly observed in young children with other developmental delays and even in those with typical development. Therefore, consideration must be given to whether a child demonstrates sufficient autism spectrum disorder…

Restricted and repetitive behaviors are a core feature of autism spectrum disorder. This descriptive study documented the presence of restricted and repetitive behaviors in 85 toddlers with autism spectrum disorder as they interacted with their caregiver in a play interaction. For each child restricted and repetitive behavior, a caregiver…

We assessed potential factors associated with "current" or "ever" self-injurious behaviors, reported in the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised, among children with autism spectrum disorder (n = 692) from the Study to Explore Early Development. Data on factors examined were obtained from questionnaires, standardized clinical…

Infant social-communicative behavior, such as gaze to the face of an interactive partner, is an important early developmental skill. Children with autism spectrum disorder exhibit atypicalities in social-communicative behavior, including gaze and eye contact. Behavioral differences in infancy may serve as early markers of autism spectrum disorder…

Electrodermal activity was examined as a measure of physiological arousal within a naturalistic play context in 2-year-old toddlers (N = 27) with and without autism spectrum disorder. Toddlers with autism spectrum disorder were found to have greater increases in skin conductance level than their typical peers in response to administered play…

Toddlers with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) were assessed on the Repetitive Behavior Scale-Revised (RBS-R), which we found to have acceptable internal consistency. Stereotypical subscale scores showed a negligible association with cognitive level, but correlated more strongly with adaptive and social indicators. Relative to earlier reported RBS-R…

Cross-informant ratings of are considered gold standard for child behavioral assessment. To date, little work has examined informant ratings of adaptive functioning for youth with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In a large, diverse sample of youth with ASD, this study evaluated parent-teacher concordance of ratings of adaptive functioning and…

The purpose of the study was to evaluate the use of the iPod Touch™ as a Speech Generated Device (SGD) for Functional Communication Training (FCT). The evaluation of the effects on problem behavior, the effects on generalization and maintenance of the acquired communication repertoire, and the social initiations of peers between the new SGD (iPod…

Previously, we adapted the Home Situations Questionnaire to measure behavioral non-compliance in everyday settings in children with pervasive developmental disorders. In this study, we further revised this instrument for use in autism spectrum disorder and examined its psychometric properties (referred to as the Home Situations…