The social communication impairment that prevents children with ASD from expressing themselves or asking for what they need not only negatively affects their well being, it also contributes to elevated stress for parents. The time and money required for therapies for their children also may prevent many parents from devoting resources to their own self-care.…
Mathematics skills are crucial to postsecondary success. Autistic secondary students need instruction that explicitly prepares them to apply the skills they learn in school to real-world settings. Simply knowing what to do without knowing when or why is insufficient. With generalization and independence as the ultimate goal, students need instruction that addresses the skills necessary…
In order to be able to live independently, it is necessary to be able to walk from place to place and cross streets successfully. Many autistic adults, however, are not able to safely navigate as a pedestrian, which makes a variety of activities, from holding a job and attending school to shopping and going to…
Research shows that paraprofessionals can implement supports in the classroom that will enable them to address challenging behavior among students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Research has also shown that functional communication training can be implemented in school settings among students with ASD. What research has not shown, however, is if paraprofessionals can deliver functional…
Healthy dating relationships are an important part of development. However, a significant number of high school students say that they have experienced dating violence. While there are not national statistics on how many young people with autism have had similar experiences, the fact that many people with autism have trouble with social skills is a…
The pronounced challenges that young people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) face in seeking and maintaining employment often stand in stark contrast to their abilities. Programs like the successful nonprofit Tech Kids Unlimited, which provides technological instruction for New York City students with ASD in one-week summer camp workshops, are needed to address this gap…
Executive functions are the set of thinking skills that allow us to successfully set goals, make plans, wait for what we want, organize information, and be flexible. These skills are critical to doing well in school, at work, and living on our own. People with autism, however, often have difficulty with executive functions, preventing them…
In 2017, three researchers, Collette Sosnowy, Ph.D., Paul Shattuck, Ph.D., and Chloe Silverman, Ph.D., at the A.J. Drexel Autism Institute completed a one-year OAR-funded qualitative study, “Measuring What Matters.” The goal of the study was to develop a contemporary conceptual framework of stakeholder perspectives about outcomes for adult autism in order to inform better measures…
In this one-year study, “Examining Personal and Environmental Factors Associated with Community Participation for Adults with ASD,” investigators Dara Chan, Sc.D., an assistant professor in the Division of Clinical Rehabilitation and Mental Health Counseling at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Mark R. Klinger, Ph.D., director of research at the TEACCH Autism…
In 2016, OAR awarded $2,000 research grants to Shalini Sivathasan, a Ph.D. student in educational and counseling psychology at McGill University in Canada, and Andrea Trubanova, a graduate student in clinical psychology at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Both planned to study interventions that held the promise of improving facial emotion recognition. Sivathasan’s study…
