The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA; P.L. 108-446) is the primary source of federal funding to states for the identification and education of children with disabilities. The majority of IDEA appropriations are allocated to states by formula to carry out activities under Part B, which covers 14 disability categories. Each state is…

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have higher rates of co-occurring diagnoses and use of psychotropic medication prescriptions than people with other developmental disabilities. Few studies have examined these trends in samples of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) with and without ASD. Using a random…

Background: Although parental stress is higher for children with neurodevelopmental disorders (NDs), it is unclear how this stress compares to more common NDs. The current study compared stress in parents of children with Williams syndrome (WS), Down syndrome (DS) and autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The impact of individual and contextual factors…

The aim of this study was to examine fathers' involvement with their deaf children, and to compare it with the involvement of fathers of children with other disabilities and of typical children. A sample of 172 fathers of preschool-aged children participated in the study. Of these, 25 had deaf children, 23 had children with intellectual…

Background: Participation in social and physical activities has a number of benefits for children with or without disabilities. However, individuals with disabilities are often excluded from taking part in social activities. Most of the research on activity participation has focused on adults or youth with milder disabilities. However, children…

Anxiety disorders affect ~ 15-20% of youths without neurodevelopmental disorders, with persons having autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and fragile X syndrome (FXS) at elevated risk for anxiety disorders. Few studies have compared rates and predictors of anxiety disorders in adolescents with FXS or ASD. This study directly compares rates, predictors,…

Age-related behavioural change in Cornelia de Lange syndrome is poorly understood. We report a 7 year follow-up study of adaptive behaviour, autism spectrum disorder symptomatology, language skills and behavioural characteristics in 30 individuals with Cornelia de Lange syndrome, compared with 18 individuals with Cri du Chat syndrome. The…

The employment rate among persons with autism spectrum disorder has been noted as unacceptably low. Employment-support services are increasingly linked to the potential for favorable job outcomes, yet little is known about employment-support practices and the outcome of these interventions. This mixed-methods study examined employment-support…

Background: Systematicity principle, used during analogical reasoning, enables building up deeper abstract concepts as part of structure mapping. The purpose of this study was to investigate structure mapping processes that occur during acquisition of new relational categories and to identify the learning patterns and systematicity of children…

Phenotypical heterogeneity in language abilities is a hallmark of autism but remains poorly understood. The present study collected naturalistic language samples from parent-child interactions. We quantified verbal abilities (mean length of utterance, tokens, types) of 50 Chinese-speaking children (M = 5; 6) and stratified subgroups based on their…

Mothers are often the primary parent participants in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) research. As a result, little is known about fathers' perceptions regarding their children's ASD and whether these perceptions differ from mothers'. Given the limited information available regarding fathers' perceptions about their children's ASD, this study aimed…

Little is known about the extent to which the healthcare needs of autistic older adults with intellectual disability differ from autistic older adults without intellectual disability. We conducted a cross-sectional retrospective cohort study of Medicare claims data from 2016 to 2017 to compare the prevalence of physical and mental health…

There is growing evidence of a camouflaging effect among females with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), particularly among those without intellectual disability, which may affect performance on gold-standard diagnostic measures. This study utilized an age- and IQ-matched sample of school-aged youth (n = 228) diagnosed with ASD to assess sex…

This study examined differences in self-determination among students with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), students with intellectual disability (ID), and students with learning disabilities (LD). A total of 222 participants with an equal size group for each of the three disability categories were selected to participate in the comparison of total…

Although differences in DNA methylation have been associated with both syndromic and idiopathic autism, differential methylation has not been examined previously with respect to sex differences. The goals of this study were to (1) identify differences in the DNA methylation profiles of lymphoblastoid cell lines derived from a subgroup of severely…