Sibling relationships may be strained when one sibling is diagnosed with autism and the other is not. The way that siblings interact during play is one indicator of the quality of this relationship. Non-autistic siblings have been taught to encourage play in their autistic siblings, but there is limited literature examining the impact of…

Educators are charged with the task of providing specialized programming to meet individual needs while also ensuring this occurs in the least restrictive environment, with as much inclusion as possible. Research has demonstrated the importance of access to evidence-based practices (EBP) to ensuring positive outcomes on targeted skills for…

Purpose: The present study explored the extent to which early prelinguistic communication skills predict expressive language in toddlers with autistic siblings (Sibs-autism), who are known to be at high likelihood for autism and language disorder, and a comparison group of toddlers with non-autistic older siblings (Sibs-NA). Method: Participants…

Listening to and creating music can be an effective way to help alleviate various symptoms and provide a sense of inner calm. For this reason, music therapy is becoming an increasingly popular form of holistic "healing," particularly for children and adults who are neurodiverse. Playing musical instruments and engaging in music therapy…

A product of ASD socio-communicative-deficits and insufficient police training related to autism, ASD-police interactions have the potential to become problematic, with negative outcomes for ASD individuals and police alike. Thus, the combination of police acclimation, simulatory experience for drivers with ASD and the introduction of…

There is a lack of services to support adolescents and adults with ASD in different areas including social-communication intervention. The purpose of this study is to conduct a meta-analysis determining effects of social-communication interventions in improving social-communication skills for adolescents and adults with ASD. A search of databases…

This meta-analysis examined correlations between eye-tracking measures of gaze behaviors manifested during dynamic salient social stimuli and behavioral assessment measures of social communication skills of young autistic children. We employed a multilevel model with random effects to perform three separate meta-analyses for correlation between…

Background: Interventions facilitated by caregivers have gained popularity among those caring for young children with autism. Instructing caregivers on specific techniques to foster social communication skills in their at-risk or diagnosed autistic children has the potential to alleviate concerns about their children's development. Moreover, it…

The ability to repair breakdowns in communication is a critical pragmatic language skill. To date however, studies of repairs have been conducted with mothers or examiners. Little is known about repairs children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) use in interactions with fathers. Expanding our understanding of communication repairs used with…

Naturalistic, Developmental, and Behavioral Interventions (NDBIs) are an empirically supported intervention approach for young autistic children and their families. Spanish-speaking (SS) Latinx families have been underrepresented in autism intervention research, limiting our understanding of whether NDBIs are aligned with Latinx family values and…

This study tested for the emergence of listener discriminations and intraverbal vocal responses following tact training with four autistic children. All participants were trained to tact the name and the favorite food of two contrived cartoon monsters in the presence of a picture of the monster (e.g., "What is the name of this monster?"…

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) often exhibit persistent deficits in social communication and interaction, along with restrictive and repetitive patterns of behavior. These characteristics can significantly hinder their ability to navigate social interactions and succeed in academic settings. This study explored the need for…

This study used a single-subject design to determine the effectiveness of the Cool versus Not Cool (CNC) discrimination procedure to teach social skills to three young U.S. adults with autism. The CNC procedure was administered remotely during this study. The specific social skills targeted were asking open-ended questions and responding…

Background: Despite increasing knowledge of social communication skills of autistic people, the interrelatedness of different skills such as non-linguistic comprehension, social inference and empathizing skills is not much known about. A better understanding of the complex interplay between different domains of social communication helps us to…

The purpose of this study was to assess whether variations in visual stimulus presentation during tact training would affect efficacy, efficiency, and the emergence of listener responses. Participants included two preschool-aged children diagnosed with autism. We implemented two teaching conditions using an adapted alternating treatment design…