Background: Student academic behavioral engagement (BE) contributes to learning and school success. Student-teacher relationships (STRs) may promote BE, although previous findings regarding how these constructs are associated over time are mixed. For young autistic students who face barriers to early school success, a high-quality STR may serve as…

Early elementary students on the autism spectrum are at risk for poor quality student-teacher relationships (STRs), a key contributor to student outcomes. However, these students' own appraisals of their STRs are nearly absent from the literature. This study examined children's perspectives of STRs and agreement with teacher-reported STRs for a…

Viewed through a social justice lens, preschool expulsion is an educational equity issue. This study focused on prior expulsion from preschool and child-care in a longitudinal study of 203 autistic children, ages 4 to 7. By parent report, 16%--one out of six autistic children--had been expelled from a preschool or child-care setting prior to…

This study compared no-no prompt to flexible prompt fading to teach four children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder expressive labels. Using an adapted alternating treatment design, we evaluated the effectiveness of both systems to teach each participant to expressively label 10 pictures of athletes. The researchers evaluated the…

State-funded prekindergarten (preK) programs are increasingly common across the country. This study estimated the effects of eight state-funded preK programs (Arkansas, California, Michigan, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and West Virginia) on children's learning using a regression discontinuity design. These programs vary with…

Life span developmental psychology proposes that the ability to create a coherent life narrative does not develop until early adolescence. Using a novel methodology, 10-, 12-, and 14-year-old participants were asked to tell their life stories aloud to a researcher. Later, participants separated their transcribed narratives into self-identified…

The provision of reinforcement to increase desired behaviors is a crucial element of behavior analytic intervention for individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Formal preference assessments, like the multiple stimulus without replacement procedure (MSWO), are often used to determine reinforcers used during intervention. While…

ASD symptomology and behavioral problems pose challenges for children with ASD in school. Disagreement between parents and teachers in ratings of children's behavior problems may provide clinically relevant information. We examined parent-teacher disagreement on ratings of behavior problems among children with ASD during the fall and spring of the…

ASD symptomology and behavioral problems pose challenges for children with ASD in school. Disagreement between parents and teachers in ratings of children's behavior problems may provide clinically relevant information. We examined parent-teacher disagreement on ratings of behavior problems among children with ASD during the fall and spring of the…

The ability to recognize and label emotions serves as a building block by which children make sense of the world and learn how to interact with social partners. However, the timing and salience of influences on emotion recognition development are not fully understood. Path analyses evaluated the contributions of parenting and child narrative…

This study examined the prevalence of ADHD symptoms and anxiety as reported by parents and teachers for 180 preschool children (ages 4-5) and school-aged children (ages 6-7) with ASD using the Child Behavior Checklist--Parent and Teacher Report Forms (Achenbach and Rescorla, Manual for ASEBA school-age forms & profiles, Research Center for…

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are at heightened risk for developing comorbid psychological disorders, including anxiety disorders, which may be further exacerbated by the presence of externalizing behaviors. Here, we examined how structural language and pragmatic language predicted anxiety and externalizing behaviors. Participants…

The quality of early student-teacher relationships (STRs) has been shown to predict children's school adjustment, and children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are at risk for poor quality STRs. The present study examined 162 children with ASD (ages 4-7) and their teachers to evaluate student, teacher, and classroom characteristics that…

This study investigated associations between school-readiness patterns of Latino students and their subsequent academic achievement. After identifying a subgroup of students with academic risk at kindergarten entry who showed signs of later average or better academic skill development, academic data were gathered to explore how this group of…

The present study investigated whether (a) growth patterns related to cognitive processing (working memory, updating, inhibition) differed in subgroups of children with reading disabilities (RD) and (b) growth in working memory (executive processing) predicted growth in other cognitive areas, such as reading and math. Seventy-three children (ages…