Each year, the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC) releases a list of scientific advances that represent significant progress in the field of autism research. The "2021 Summary of Advances" provides short, plain language summaries of the top research breakthroughs selected by the IACC from a pool of research articles…

Previous studies of response classes in individuals with developmental disabilities (DD) and problem behavior have shown that mild problem behavior, precursor behavior, and mands or requests can occur as functionally equivalent to severe problem behavior in some individuals. Furthermore, participants in some studies chose to use functionally…

Video-modeling (VM) is a widely used instructional technique that has been applied to the education of children with developmental disabilities. One form of VM that lacks in-depth analysis is point-of-view video modeling (POVM). The current study investigated the use of POVM to teach three children diagnosed with autism to initiate and maintain a…

This study compared the total amount of training time and total number of trial blocks for individuals with severe developmental disabilities to acquire mands under control of unconditioned establishing operations and mands under control of transitive conditioned establishing operations for manual sign and for the Picture Exchange Communication…

Background: The superiority of language and communication skills in children and adults with Williams syndrome (WS) is currently being debated. Whilst there have been a number of reports of precursors of language in WS in children who have already developed language, there have not been many studies that have prospectively investigated precursors…

The Verbal Interaction Analysis System is presented as an assessment of initial, dyadic conversations. Application of the VIAS to two case studies featuring mildly to moderately intellectually disabled adults shows how the VIAS provides an index of competence and assists in the development of specific treatment strategies. (Author/JDD)

Eight mothers of developmentally disabled children (ages 2-11) were individually trained in eight skill domains (e.g., preparation, complete communication, clarification, consensus, feedback) to enhance their communication skills with professionals. Each parent acquired the targeted skills during simulated conferences, and correct responding…

Using sound field amplification which increased the intensity of the teacher's voice by 10 decibels, 9 primary-level children with developmental disabilities made fewer errors on a word identification task, were more relaxed, and responded more quickly than without amplification. (Author/JDD)

Asperger Syndrome (AS) is a developmental disability marked by impairments in verbal and nonverbal communication, socialization, and behavior. This article provides an introduction to the difficulties experienced by students with AS and six strategies that can be easily implemented by teachers or parents to help students acquire the skills needed…