The vast majority of joint attention interventions for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are geared toward toddlers and preschoolers as it is an early developmental skill. However, many of the youngsters do not acquire joint attention despite these early interventions and subsequently do not exhibit joint attention later in life. In the…

Previous word learning studies suggest that children with autism spectrum disorder may have difficulty understanding pictorial symbols. Here we investigate the ability of children with autism spectrum disorder and language-matched typically developing children to contextualize symbolic information communicated by pictures in a search task that did…

Findings from two studies investigating the effects of a socially interactive robot on the vocalization production of young children with disabilities are reported. The two studies included seven children with autism, two children with Down syndrome, and two children with attention deficit disorders. The Language ENvironment Analysis (LENA)…

Deferred imitation and early social communication skills were compared among speaking and nonspeaking children with autism and children developing typically. Overall, the children with autism showed a lower frequency on measures of deferred imitation and social communication compared with typically developing children. Deferred imitation was…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of peer intervention on the social interactions of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In this model, a speech-language pathologist and three early childhood educators trained typically developing peers to engage children with ASD in play. Three preschool children with ASD and six…

This study sought to determine the effects of using music and non-music interventions on the social responsive and avoidant behaviours of a preschool child with autism. A single-subject alternating treatment design was used in which two interventions were presented in a similar fashion except for the addition of music during the music condition.…