Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often exhibit disordered speech prosody, but sources of disordered prosody remain poorly understood. We explored patterns of temporal alignment and prosodic grouping in a speech-based metronome repetition task as well as manual coordination in a drum tapping task among Cantonese speakers with ASD and…

Purpose: Our objective was to delineate components of motor performance in specific language impairment (SLI); specifically, whether deficits in timing precision in one effector (unimanual tapping) and in two effectors (bimanual clapping) are observed in young children with SLI. Method: Twenty-seven 4- to 5-year-old children with SLI and 21…

Children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) have language difficulties of unknown origin. Syntactic profiles are atypical, with poor performance on non-canonical structures, e.g. object relatives, suggesting a localized deficit. However, existing analyses using ANOVAs are problematic because they do not systematically address unequal…

Analogical reasoning is an important mechanism for social cognition in typically developing children, and recent evidence suggests that some forms of analogical reasoning may be preserved in autism spectrum disorder. An unanswered question is whether children with autism spectrum disorder can apply analogical reasoning to social information. In…

This study investigates whether developmental dyslexia involves an impairment in implicit phonological representations, as distinct from orthographic representations and metaphonological skills. A group of adults with dyslexia was matched with a group with no history of speech/language/literacy impairment. Tasks varied in the demands made on…

Distraction is a typical component of any classroom environment. For effective instruction and learning to take place, it is critical for students to eventually return to task and maintain task vigilance (i.e., returning to the task at hand) when a distraction occurs. Students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), by definition,…

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have high levels of anxiety. It is unclear whether they exhibit threat-related attentional biases commensurate with anxiety disorders as manifest in non-ASD populations, such as facilitated attention toward, and difficulties disengaging engaging from, threatening stimuli. Ninety children, 45 cognitively…

The goal of the current study was to examine the contribution of three early social skills that may provide a foundation for cooperative performance in autism: (1) imitation, (2) joint attention, and (3) understanding of other people's intentions regarding actions on objects. Fourteen children with autistic disorder (AD) and 15 children with other…