Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) are known to present difficulties in storytelling, both in macrostructure (i.e., narrative scheme) and in microstructure (i.e., language complexity). Studies also show that children with DLD can improve their narrative macrostructural performance through specific intervention. While most…

Purpose: Adolescents with developmental language disorder (DLD) are an underserved population. Having DLD affects adolescents' academic and eventual economic success, supporting the need for accurate, clinically feasible DLD screening tools for adolescents. The objective of this review is to identify clinically feasible screening tools for…

Background: This study's aim was to examine the relationship between health care professionals' intersecting implicit attitudes about disability and race, and their beliefs about people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Methods: We had 784 health care professionals participate in the Intersecting Disability and Race Attitudes…

Background: Father involvement in parenting has received scarce attention in the disability field. This qualitative study explored the involvement, roles and responsibilities of fathers of individuals with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (aged 5-24 years). Methods: Thirteen fathers participated in online, semi-structured interviews.…

Research on neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) has led us to refine our theoretical and methodological approaches. We explore whether new deficit clusters in line with the Research Domain Criteria, a novel multifactorial framework, optimally explain known conditions such as ADHD, DLD, or SLD in reading. Following the PRISMA guidelines for…

Multi-sensory rooms were originally intended as a leisure option for people with severe disabilities living in institutions. Their use has extended far beyond this and proponents, particularly equipment suppliers, continue to claim a range of benefits beyond provision of a leisure experience. We review the literature on the effects of MSEs on…

Autism is heterogeneous at many levels, including clinical symptoms and etiology. A key strategy in studying heterogeneous conditions is having large enough sample sizes to stratify into smaller groups that are more homogeneous. SPARK and Simons Searchlight are large and growing research cohorts of individuals with autism in the United States and…

Purpose: The word learning of preschool-age children with developmental language disorder (DLD) is improved when spaced retrieval practice is incorporated into the learning sessions. In this preregistered study, we compared two types of spacing--an expanding retrieval practice schedule and an equally spaced schedule--to determine if one of these…

Purpose: Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) tend to interpret noncanonical sentences like passives using event probability (EP) information regardless of structure (e.g., by interpreting "The dog was chased by the squirrel" as "The dog chased the squirrel"). Verbs are a major source of EP information in adults…

Leisure participation enhances the learning of adaptive skills and the quality of life in youth with developmental disabilities. The goal of this study was to evaluate the effects of a leisure education program in individuals with developmental disabilities in terms of adaptive behavior and quality of life. Nine participants divided into two small…

Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States' Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) created guidance documents that were too complex to be read and understood by the majority of adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities who often read at or below a third-grade reading level. This study explored the extent to…

A growing number of adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) attend day programming. These programs are designed to give consumers the opportunity to explore the community, socialize with community members, and to engage in community activities. Unfortunately, activities offered may be selected by program staff without much…

Objective: Pragmatics can be defined as the appropriate use of language in social interactions. Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) exhibit difficulties in pragmatic language (PL), but the nature and sources of these difficulties have not been fully investigated yet. The purpose of…

Background: As trauma-informed care advances in the service delivery system for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, additional resources are needed to foster staff development. This article describes the development and pilot evaluation of a digital training on trauma-informed care among direct service providers (DSPs) in the…

The direct support professional (DSP) workforce shortage crisis has reached untenable levels during the COVID-19 pandemic as DSPs rapidly exit the workforce. To gain a better understanding of factors that contribute to DSP resilience during stressful and challenging times, we interviewed 10 DSPs identified by colleagues as resilient to elicit…