The Transform Autism Education (TAE) project is a tri-national teacher training scheme involving Greece, Italy and the UK, whose purpose is to set up training projects to facilitate the educational inclusion of autistic children. Running over three years from 2014 to 2017, the involvement of autistic participants has been the source of some…

We examined processing of verbal irony in three groups of children: (1) 18 children with high-functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder (HFASD), (2) 18 typically-developing children, matched to the first group for verbal ability, and (3) 18 typically-developing children matched to the first group for chronological age. We utilized an irony…

Past research indicates that newspaper representations of developmental disability reinforce negative stereotypes. The aim of this study was to examine depictions of autism in British newspapers. A qualitative content and discourse analysis of newspaper accounts of autism was conducted over four 1-month time points, every 3 years, between May 1999…

This article draws on the traditions of critical discourse analysis (N. Fairclough, 1995, 2001; M. Foucault, 1972, 1980; J. P. Gee, 1999) in critically examining the discursive formation of "recovery" from autism in applied behavioral analysis (ABA) discourse and its relationship to constructs of hope. Constituted principally in the work of O. I.…

In issue definition in rights-based policy Canada stereotypically embraces a more positive, human rights-centered approach as compared with the American stereotype associated with the USA's more presumptively negative, civil rights-based tack. Since exclusionary infrastructures violate the core values of democratic governance, a failure to address…

Based upon an emergent account of pragmatic ability and disability, this article provides theoretical and empirical support for a conceptually deeper understanding of some systematic behaviors that have served as diagnostic indices in communicatively impaired populations. Specifically, by employing conversation analysis, several examples of…

Purpose: This article is intended to demonstrate that adapted conversation analysis (CA) and speech act analysis (SAA) may be applied by speech-language pathologists (SLPs) to (a) identify communicative competencies in nonspeaking children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), especially during particularly successful interactions, and (b) identify…

This paper details an analysis of BBC reporting of the proposed links between MMR and autism. The study aimed to identify main issues arising from the media reports into the link between MMR and the development of autism, and how these contribute to common understandings about people with autism. The study employed a form of discourse analysis to…

A case study analyzed the echolalia behavior of an autistic 11-year-old boy, based on recordings made in his home and school. Focus was on the subset of immediate echolalia referred to as pure echoing. Using an approach informed by conversation analysis and descriptive phonetics, distinctions are drawn between different forms of pure echo. It is…