This dissertation focuses on sensory-based strategies at schools for students on the autism spectrum, with a focus on the degree to which these approaches might be effective for reducing interfering behaviors or promoting on-task behaviors. Chapter 1 provides an introduction and brief background information related to the subsequent chapters.…

Joint attention (JA) is a pivotal prelinguistic skill critical to developing language and social repertoires. This behavior is often absent or delayed in children with autism spectrum disorder, commonly resulting in problematic communicative consequences. Behavior-based interventions have been used to teach autistic children to initiate and…

Statistical learning (SL), the ability to detect and extract regularities from inputs, has been considered as an early-maturing and domain-general mechanism that is critical for typical language development. However, recent evidence in neurotypical adults and children have found that individuals can vary in their SL abilities across linguistic and…

A single-subject research design was utilized to study the effects of noise-cancelling headphones on students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the classroom. Academic success has long been linked to students' time spent on-task in the classroom. Interventions to maintain time spent on-task have been studied and researched but many, currently…

This study compared between the roles of the socio-pragmatic and data-driven aspects of caregiver input in the vocabulary development of both Typically Developing (TD) Children and children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). The role of Joint Attention (JA) and Supported Joint Engagement (SJE) episode types, as well as Follow-In (FI) Comments,…