Objectives: Caring for individuals with intellectual disabilities (ID) or autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can be gratifying as well as stressful. Professional staff employed as caregivers often report compromised mental and physical wellbeing due to the stressful nature of working with clients who exhibit aggressive and destructive behaviors.…

We assessed the impact and social rating of an active and a passive music condition implemented with six patients with Alzheimer's disease. In the active condition, the patients used a simple hand response and a microswitch to self-regulate music stimulation inputs. In the passive condition, music stimulation was automatically presented throughout…

This study assessed technology-aided programs for helping two post-coma persons, who had emerged from a minimally conscious state and were affected by multiple disabilities, to (a) engage with leisure stimuli and request caregiver's procedures, (b) send out and listen to text messages for communication with distant partners, and (c) combine…

This study assessed whether three patients with Alzheimer's disease could learn to use urine alarms and caregivers' prompts to eliminate large urinary accidents. As soon as the patient began to release urine, the alarm system presented auditory and vibratory signals. In relation to those signals, the caregiver would prompt/encourage the patient to…

In an earlier study, we provided mindfulness training to three caregivers of individuals with profound multiple disabilities. We measured levels of happiness displayed by the individuals during the 8 weeks of mindfulness training of the caregivers, as well as during the 16 weeks following the termination of training. We found that happiness…

The first of these two studies extended preliminary evidence on the use of technology-based programs for enabling students with severe and profound multiple disabilities to choose and access environmental stimuli on their own. Each of the three participants had two microswitches linked to specific sets of stimuli through a computer system. The…

Background: The use of physical restraints has generated immense controversy in the delivery of services to individuals with intellectual disabilities. The current "zeitgeist" is that effective positive approaches obviate the need for using physical restraints. In a multiple baseline design, we sought to assess how training staff members in…

One major objective of programs for persons with severe or profound intellectual and multiple disabilities is to teach these persons occupational and vocational tasks and to enable them to carry out these tasks independently (Davis, Brady, Williams, & Burta, 1992; Lancioni et al., 1991; Steed & Lutzker, 1997). The performance of such tasks has…