Children with autism exhibit deficits in imitation skills. Previous authors have suggested that they may have particular difficulty imitating in natural social interactions, but properly controlled experiments investigating this possibility have not been conducted. To investigate this possibility, children with autism and typically developing…

Students with complaints about faculty members--baseless or otherwise--take up a great deal of a typical department head's day. This author, a department chairman for seven years, supervised close to 200 full-time and part-time faculty members, and received complaints about every single one. At least 70 percent of those complaints were of the "my…

Despite being eclipsed in recent years by simulation theory, theory of mind and accounts of executive functioning, social-relational approaches to perspective taking and coordination based on the ideas of Jean Piaget and George Herbert Mead have never completely disappeared from the literature of developmental psychology. According to the…

Purpose: This study aims to explore the role of interactants' nonverbal sensitivity, anxiety and sociodemographic characteristics in learning and satisfaction within the genetic counseling context. Design/methodology/approach: This is a combined simulation and analogue study. Simulations were videotaped with 152 prenatal and cancer genetic…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of improvisational music therapy on joint attention behaviors in pre-school children with autism. It was a randomized controlled study employing a single subject comparison design in two different conditions, improvisational music therapy and play sessions with toys, and using standardized…

Given the increasing rates of autism, identifying prompting procedures that can assist in the development of more optimal learning opportunities for this population is critical. Extensive empirical research exists supporting the effectiveness of various prompting strategies. Constant time delay (CTD) is a highly implemented prompting procedure…

Asperger syndrome (AS) is characterized by social deficits and restricted interests in the absence of mental retardation and language delay. However, it is unclear to what extent the social deficits of AS differ from those of traditional autism. To address this issue, 58 subjects with AS were compared with 39 subjects with autism. Social deficits…

Considerable research has focused on youth depression, but further information is needed to characterize different patterns of onset and recurrence during adolescence. Four outcome groups by age 20 were defined (early onset-recurrent, early-onset-desisting, later-onset, never depressed) and compared on three variables predictive of youth…

Event schemas (generalized knowledge of what happens at common real-life events, e.g., a birthday party) are an important cognitive tool for social understanding: They provide structure for social experiences while accounting for many variable aspects. Using an event narratives task, this study tested the hypotheses that theory of mind (ToM)…

Conferences with an upset parent, teacher, or student should be opportunities for schools to build relationships with the community and to foster a positive school culture. But in reality, they are often held because a problem has arisen and often end with stakeholders having a less-than-positive image of the school. Understanding the steps that…

This study examined the use of five servant leadership dimensions including altruistic calling, emotional healing, wisdom, persuasive mapping, and organizational stewardship by male and female servant leaders. Staff members (368) employed in county government offices across a Midwestern state were sampled using the Servant Leadership Questionnaire…

The Swedish school law and curriculum states that students shall be participative in their work. They should work in a participative manner and the pedagogical idea is that influence and participation has multiple benefits for students' development. In this article the relationship between student participation and school success is examined. By…

Many inmates arrive in prison with weak educational backgrounds and social skills as well as psychological problems and drug and alcohol addiction. The focus of this phenomenological study was to identify roles of prison educators in helping inmate students overcome their challenges through transformative experiences that motivate the students to…

This study examines the impact that diversity courses (DC's), created to increase social awareness on college campuses, have on 553 students' interactions with faculty, critical thinking and social engagement. Conducted at a large, private tier one research institution, this study reviews a pre-college survey, post-college survey and student…

More children are receiving care outside of their home under the age of six (Childstats.gov, 2007). The quality of these programs has a direct impact on student's readiness for school (Burchinal, Roberts, Nabors, & Bryant, 1996). Social readiness is the foundation for school readiness and academic achievement (Blair, 2002; Brigman, Lane, Lane,…