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…

Five teenagers with severe intellectual impairments and no discernible communication skills were enrolled in training to teach a conditional request for assistance using a speech-generating device (SGD). All were either blind or severely visually impaired since birth. All learned to operate an adaptive switch to control sensory outcomes, next…

The present study (a) extended the assessment of an orientation program involving auditory cues (i.e., verbal messages automatically presented from the destinations) with five patients with Alzheimer's disease, (b) compared the effects of this program with those of a program with light cues (i.e., a program in which strobe lights were used instead…

The current study investigated the development of figurative language production, including different types of figurative expressions, during a fictional narrative in 20 typically developing (TD) children and 20 children with Williams syndrome (WS) aged 7-18 years old. In contrast to previous studies, developmental trajectories showed that (1) the…

Williams (WS) and Down (DS) syndromes are characterised by roughly opposing ability profiles. Relative verbal strengths and visuospatial difficulties have been reported in those with WS, while expressive language difficulties have been observed in individuals with DS. Few investigations into the executive function (EF) skills of these groups have…

In a recent single-case study, we showed that a new verbal-instruction system, ensuring the automatic presentation of step instructions, was beneficial for promoting the task performance of a woman with multiple disabilities (including blindness). The present study was aimed at replicating and extending the aforementioned investigation with three…

Children with intellectual disability (ID) were given a comprehensive range of executive functioning measures, which systematically varied in terms of verbal and non-verbal demands. Their performance was compared to the performance of groups matched on mental age (MA) and chronological age (CA), respectively. Twenty-two children were included in…

This study investigated the utility of adult and infant vocalisation in the prediction of child psychopathology. Families were sampled from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) birth cohort. Vocalisation patterns were obtained from 180 videos (60 cases and 120 randomly selected sex-matched controls) of parent-infant…

It is common to use questionnaires and interviews to assess the emotions of staff who serve clients with intellectual disabilities. Remarkably, observations of actual staff behaviour and assessments of nonverbal expressions are usually not involved. In the present study, we have made a first start in the development of an observation instrument…

Lumley and Miltenberger (1997) noted the paucity of empirical investigations involving teaching sexual-abuse-protection skills to people with intellectual disabilities. We reviewed relevant empirical investigations since 1997. Six studies trained sexual-abuse-protection skills, and two also included protection skills related to physical and verbal…

Children with developmental disabilities benefit from their language environment as much as, or even more than, typically developing (TD) children, but maternal language directed to developmentally delayed children is an underinvestigated topic. The purposes of the present study were to compare maternal functional language directed to children…

This study presents a meta-analytic review of language and verbal short-term memory skills in children with Down syndrome. The study examines the profile of strengths and weaknesses in children with Down syndrome compared to typically developing children matched for nonverbal mental age. The findings show that children with Down syndrome have…

Drawing upon information about the Down syndrome behavioral phenotype and empirically based intervention strategies, we examined intervention addressing early communication impairments in young children with Down syndrome. Intervention involved multiple opportunities, shaping, prompting, and reinforcement to address both verbal imitation and…

The dearth of information on the pain experience of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) calls for a more comprehensive understanding of pain in this population. The Non-Communicating Adults Pain Checklist (NCAPC) is an 18-item behavioral scale that was recently found to be reliable, valid, sensitive and clinically…

The emergence of the Down syndrome (DS) behavioural phenotype during early development may be of great importance for early intervention. The main goal of this study was to investigate the good-imitator-poor-talker developmental profile in DS at preschool age. Twenty children with Down syndrome (DS; mean nonverbal mental age NMA 1 y10 m) and 15…