Autistic children are less likely to be jointly engaged with a play partner than nonautistic children, negatively impacting social communication development. Promoting joint engagement during play can be an important target for educators of autistic students, but educator perceptions of autistic students may affect their interactions with…

Children begin to show preferences for specific playmates as early as the first 2?years of life. Children with autism spectrum disorder have difficulty making friends, even in elementary and middle school. However, very little is known about earlier friendships in children with autism such as preschool friendships. This study examined friendships…

Difficulty with social competence is a core deficit of autism spectrum disorder. Research on typically developing children and children with disabilities, in general, suggests the adult talk received in the classroom is related to their social development. The aims of this study were to examine (1) the types and amounts of adult talk children with…

Purpose: Early Achievements for Education Settings (EA-ES) is a teacher-implemented naturalistic developmental behavioral intervention for preschoolers with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) targeting core social communication impairments. The purpose of this pilot randomized controlled clinical trial (RCT) was to examine promise of efficacy of this…

The aim of this study was to pilot test a classroom-based intervention focused on facilitating play and joint attention for young children with autism in self-contained special education classrooms. Thirty-three children with autism between the ages of 3 and 6 years participated in the study with their classroom teachers (n = 14). The 14 preschool…

This study investigated questions adults asked to children with autism spectrum disorder in inclusive pre-kindergarten classrooms, and whether child (e.g. autism severity) and setting (i.e. adult-to-child ratio) characteristics were related to questions asked during center-time. Videos of verbal children with autism spectrum disorder (n?=?42) were…

The study examined in this review analyzed whether a full two-year "Learning Experiences and Alternative Program for Preschoolers and Their Parents" ("LEAP") training and support model for teachers was superior in improving outcomes of preschool children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), as compared to a limited…

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) tend to be less playful than their typically developing (TD) peers. Although playfulness is considered a personality characteristic, little is known about the stability of this trait in interactions with different caregivers. This study compared the playfulness of children with and without ASD in play…

Narratives require the integration of many different linguistic skills and can be used as an ecologically valid measure of child language development. This study investigated the narrative skills of 18 six- to seven-year-old prelingually deaf children who received simultaneous bilateral cochlear implants (CI) between 5 and 18 months of age. No…

This study describes the language environment of preschool programs serving children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) and examines relationships between child characteristics and an automated measure of adult and child language in the classroom. The Language Environment Analysis (LENA) system was used with 40 children with ASD to collect data…

Research Findings: Interpersonal relationships among staff caregivers, parents, and children have been recommended as essential aspects of early childhood intervention. This study explored the associations of these relationships with program outcomes for children and parents in 3 Early Head Start programs. A total of 71 children (8-35 months,…