The purpose of this study was to evaluate the feasibility of teaching an integrated requesting-rejecting sequence. Four children with developmental disabilities were taught to request missing items and reject wrong items using either speech-generating devices (SGD) or picture-exchange (PE) communication. Data showed that the introduction of the…

High stress and burnout are common for early childhood special educators, contributing to high rates of attrition, diminished educational effectiveness, and high turnover. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a promising approach for the prevention and treatment of a wide variety of problems. Using a randomized wait-list control design, this…

This study evaluated whether two children with developmental disabilities would be able to improve their pointing performance through an Automatic Pointing Assistive Program (APAP) and a newly developed mouse driver (i.e. a new mouse driver replaces standard mouse driver, and is able to intercept mouse click action). Initially, both participants…

This paper explores the aims and purpose of long term art therapy. This is done by focusing on the experience of a woman with learning disabilities whom we have called Isobel White (pseudonym). In this paper we set out a theoretical context and then consider key aspects of the therapy process. We have included excerpts from reflective discussions…

The national Quality Improvement Center on early Childhood (QIC-eC) funded four research and demonstration projects that tested child maltreatment prevention approaches. The projects were guided by several key perspectives: the importance of increasing protective factors in addition to decreasing risk factors in child maltreatment prevention…

There is limited research demonstrating direct instruction (DI) as an effective language intervention for students with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and developmental disabilities (DD). Existing research has shown that instruction using partial implementation of DI programs resulted in student learning (Ganz, 2007) and instruction using whole…

The study examined the effects of teaching presentation skills and post-school options to three high school students with developmental disabilities. While previous research has indicated students with learning disabilities can learn both academic and life skills within the same activity (Collins, Hager, & Galloway, 2011; Falkenstine, Collins,…

Collaborative consultation has been widely adopted in school-based occupational therapy practice; however, limited research has examined how collaboration between educators and occupational therapists contributes to students' outcomes. The purpose of this study was to describe the nature of collaborative working in two cases of school-based…

Autism is a developmental disability that provides special challenges to families, schools, and adult support systems. An additional area that is affected by the symptoms of autism is medicine. The deficits associated with autism in the areas of communication and social skills, as well as the prevalence of challenging behavior can interfere with…

Understanding the financial well-being of single mothers who care for children with developmental disabilities is important to ensure that public policies can be effectively targeted to support these vulnerable families. The authors analyze data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation to describe income poverty, asset poverty, income,…

We provide the first descriptive summary of selected programs developed to help expand the scope of coverage, mitigate family financial hardship, and provide health and support services that children with intellectual and developmental disabilities need to maximize their functional status and quality of life. State financing initiatives were…

We examined racial and ethnic disparities in quality of care for children with autism and other developmental disabilities and whether disparities varied for children with autism compared to children with other developmental disabilities. Analyzing data from the National Survey of Children with Special Health Care Needs (N = 4,414), we compared…

Purpose: This study aimed (1) to compare the skeletal maturity and activity participation pattern between children with and without developmental coordination disorder (DCD); and (2) to determine whether activity participation pattern was associated with the skeletal development among children with DCD. Materials and methods: Thirty-three children…

This study investigated the effects of alternative narration, highlighted text, picture/word-based captions, and interactive video searching features for improving comprehension of nonfiction academic video clips by students with intellectual and developmental disabilities (ID/DD). Combined multiple baselines across participants and alternating…

This dissertation presents the findings of a qualitative study examining needs of Chinese families with children with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The purpose of this dissertation is to inform the process of further developing the family support programs and opportunities that already exist in China and to assist in establishing…