The number of children with autism served in early intervention or the public school system appears to be growing at an alarming rate. This article provides a basis for understanding this dramatic increase. In addition, the authors present a brief overview of the characteristics of autism, research on early behavioral indicators of infants and…

This pamphlet is designed as a construct to be used as a tool for early intervention and/or teaching. This construct may be used with young students, adults, or anyone who might need help with letter identification, sounding of letters, and creating basic word units. Out of the basic components of linguistics (phonology, morphology, semantics, and…

This article, written by the bill's sponsor, describes the "Smart Start" legislation introduced in Congress. This legislation's goal is to make high quality early childhood education available to families who want it. Smart Start's potential in combatting the high dropout rate is discussed. (IAH)

Contact after 6 to 8 years with families of 21 children who were diagnosed as stuttering but did not receive fluency intervention services found that almost all subjects still had a stuttering problem. Results dispute the high spontaneous recovery rates reported in the literature and support the value of early intervention. (Author/DB)

Shows that a combined reading and phonological awareness training group made greater progress in learning to read than the Reading alone and Phonological Awareness alone groups in addition to that of the unseen control group. Affirms, contrary to earlier criticism, the stability of the treatment effect, the Sound Linkage hypothesis and the…

This article highlights key findings from the small body of research on mathematics difficulties (MD) relevant to early identification and early intervention. The research demonstrates that (a) for many children, mathematics difficulties are not stable over time; (b) the presence of reading difficulties seems related to slower progress in many…

This qualitative study evaluated the impact on program graduates of two personnel preparation projects founded on a family-centered preservice model and funded by the Office of Special Education Programs. Three cohorts totaling 22 participants were interviewed to (a) determine their attitudes and skill level in working with a diverse group of…

The present study examined and contrasted beliefs and decision-making practices concerning the use of assistive technology (AT) with infants and toddlers. Participants were 424 multidisciplinary early intervention providers drawn from across the United States. A majority of professionals disagreed with proposed belief statements about AT with…

South Korean students outperform the US and other industrialized countries in science and math during the school years. A multiple-factor psychological model provides a comparative framework to discuss the home and school factors that appear to explain achievement differences based on the Third International Math and Science Study (TIMSS).…

Although in the last 20 years much progress has been made on understanding the challenging behaviors of young children and providing effective prevention and intervention, it is not at all certain that recommended practices have been widely adopted across early care and education programs. In this article, the authors argue that a major impediment…

A family-centered approach is recommended as best practice in the field of early intervention. However, recent research suggests that some professionals in the field do not always implement family centered services. This study investigated the content taught to pre-service early intervention-early childhood special education students regarding…

In this article, the author describes his PhD thesis, titled "An examination of the social systems of engineering projects," which was transdisciplinary in that it drew from bodies of knowledge in domains of engineering, management, sociology, education and philosophy. The thesis drew together threads of the representation of real-world entities…

This study reports on the developmental functioning levels of children from birth through age 2 in early intervention services and children ages 3-5 in early childhood special education services at the time of entry into services, using data from the Oregon Early Childhood Assessment System. The assessment system contains data on the assessed…

Data from the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation study were used to examine the extent to which several factors mediate between- and within-ethnic-group differences in parenting beliefs and behaviors, and children's early cognitive development (analysis sample of 1198 families). The findings indicate that Hispanic-, European-, and…

Research Findings: The home-based Early Head Start program in this local study aimed to promote children's early attachment and cognitive development by establishing supportive relationships with parents and guiding responsive parenting and positive parent-child play interactions. To test the effectiveness of this approach, we studied the…