The importance of communication skills for students with the most significant disabilities is highlighted. Specific attention is paid to the need to recognize and understand unconventional means of communication. Ideas for augmenting the student's communicative efforts are provided, and the critical importance of team collaboration is emphasized.…

Practical and concise, this introductory guide is filled with real-world tips and strategies for anyone working to improve the communication of children with moderate, severe, and multiple disabilities. Emphasizing the link between behavior and communication, three respected researchers transform up-to-date research and proven best practices into…

A 9-year-old with multiple disabilities and visual impairments was the focus of a 10-week developmental therapeutic riding program incorporating hippotherapy. The program has led to increased mobility, an increase in visual attention span and fixation time, signs of greater verbal communication, and the acquisition of new functional signs.…

Three severely mentally retarded, multiply handicapped adolescents were treated in a classroom setting for social skill deficits. Treatment focused on increasing eye contact and strengthening on-task and in-seat behaviors. Results suggested that a combination of visual stimuli, operant, and social learning methods can be used to successfully…

Social routines, which combined nursery rhymes with carefully planned action sequences, were used to help two young developmentally delayed, visually handicapped children acquire communicative responses. Midway through the 3-year project, one child responded to words for objects, people, and actions. (Author/SEW)

This 37-minute videotape recording demonstrates selected interventions to assist infants and toddlers with multiple disabilities, including vision and hearing loss, in developing early communication and other skills. Emphasizing the critical importance of early intervention, the video is designed to help service providers and families create…

The training guide begins with a rationale for the use of special education paraprofessionals working with deaf-blind and multihandicapped children in Oklahoma schools. It presents a schedule for training paraprofessional staff in 10 sessions. Resource materials are then presented as background information for the training sessions. This…

This handbook provides basic information on the needs of young children (ages 3-8) whose multiple disabilities include visual impairments. Chapters address: (1) common disabilities associated with visual impairment, the primary educational needs of these children, and the complexity involved in teaching them; (2) the need for clearly defined…

This book is intended as a comprehensive source of information on the diagnosis and treatment of Asperger syndrome. Chapter 1 discusses major classification of characteristics and chapter 2 describes prevalence, comorbidity, and causal factors of Asperger syndrome. Chapter 3 examines clinical diagnosis and misdiagnosis and the influence of…