Biomedical subjects

Laura Schreibman

Publications and source records attributed to Laura Schreibman.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Consonant production patterns of young severely language-delayed children with autism.

UNLABELLED: While much attention has been given to documenting the language skills of verbal children with autism, the basic speech sound development patterns of severely language-impaired children with autism are unknown. Previous research has shown that certain consonants are generally produced earlier in development than other consonants, both in typically developing children and in children with language-learning impairments. While several large studies indicate that children with autism who have strong verbal skills have intact phonological development, there is some evidence that children with autism who are more severely language impaired may have abnormal phonological production. This study documents the speech sound development of non-verbal and minimally verbal children with autism. Prompts were administered for each individual speech sound while spontaneous and imitated sounds were recorded and scored. Results indicate that children with autism show the same general speech sound production patterns as typically developing and language-learning impaired children. LEARNING OUTCOMES: Individuals who read this manuscript will obtain information regarding: (1) normal phonological development, (2) a comparison of speech sound production of a group of 14 children with a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder with the production of a group of 10 typically developing children, and (3) comparisons of imitated and spontaneous sound production of the children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.

Autistic Disorder↗

PubMed2006

Teaching reciprocal imitation skills to young children with autism using a naturalistic behavioral approach: effects on language, pretend play, and joint attention.

Children with autism exhibit significant deficits in imitation skills which impede the acquisition of more complex behaviors and socialization, and are thus an important focus of early intervention programs for children with autism. This study used a multiple-baseline design across five young children with autism to assess the benefit of a naturalistic behavioral technique for teaching object imitation. Participants increased their imitation skills and generalized these skills to novel environments. In addition, participants exhibited increases in other social-communicative behaviors, including language, pretend play, and joint attention. These results provide support for the effectiveness of a naturalistic behavioral intervention for teaching imitation and offer a new and potentially important treatment option for young children who exhibit deficits in social-communicative behaviors.

Attention↗

PubMed2006

The collateral effects of joint attention training on social initiations, positive affect, imitation, and spontaneous speech for young children with autism.

Joint attention may be a core deficit in autism which underlies the abnormal development of later emerging social-communication behaviors. Given this theory, researchers have suggested that teaching young children with autism to engage in joint attention may lead to collateral increases in other non-targeted social-communication behaviors. In this study, children with autism participated in a 10-week joint attention training program and collateral changes in non-targeted behaviors were assessed. Following participation in the intervention, positive collateral changes were observed in social initiations, positive affect, imitation, play, and spontaneous speech. Results support the hypothesis that teaching joint attention skills leads to improvement in a variety of related skills and have implications for the treatment of young children with autism.

Affect↗

PubMed2005

Individual behavioral profiles and predictors of treatment effectiveness for children with autism.

Differential responsiveness to intervention programs suggests the inadequacy of a single treatment approach for all children with autism. One method for reducing outcome variability is to identify participant characteristics associated with different outcomes for a specific intervention. In this investigation, an analysis of archival data yielded 2 distinct behavioral profiles for responders and nonresponders to a widely used behavioral intervention, pivotal response training (PRT). In a prospective study, these profiles were used to select 6 children (3 predicted responders and 3 predicted nonresponders) who received PRT. Children with pretreatment responder profiles evidenced positive changes on a range of outcome variables. Children with pretreatment nonresponder profiles did not exhibit improvements. These results offer promise for the development of individualized treatment protocols for children with autism.

Autistic Disorder↗

PubMed2003

Effect of sensory feedback on immediate object imitation in children with autism.

This study examined the effect of sensory feedback (e.g., flashing lights and sound) on the imitation performance of children with autism and typical children group-matched for mental age. Participants were administered an immediate object-imitation task with six novel toys constructed for this study: three with a sensory effect that could be activated by imitating the modeled action and three without a sensory effect. Although overall imitation performance did not differ significantly between the two groups, the imitation performance of the participants with autism was significantly higher with sensory toys than with nonsensory toys. Typical participants' imitation performance did not differ between the two sets of toys. Both groups played significantly more with the sensory toys during free play, indicating that sensory toys were more reinforcing for both groups. Additional results demonstrated that typical children used significantly more social behaviors during imitation than children with autism, but they did not differ in object-oriented behaviors, replicating previous findings. It is argued that children with autism may be less motivated to imitate by social interaction, but may be motivated to imitate to receive a nonsocial reward (sensory feedback).

Affect↗

PubMed2003

Joint attention training for children with autism using behavior modification procedures.

BACKGROUND: Deficits in joint attention are considered by many researchers to be an early predictor of childhood autism (e.g., Osterling & Dawson, 1994) and are considered to be pivotal to deficits in language, play, and social development in this population (Mundy, 1995). Although many researchers have noted the importance of joint attention deficits in the development of children with autism (e.g., Mundy, Sigman, & Kasari, 1994) and have called for intervention strategies (e.g., Mundy & Crowson, 1997), few studies have attempted to target joint attention. In this study, joint attention behaviors were taught to children with autism using a behavior modification procedure. METHODS: A multiple-baseline design was implemented to evaluate intervention effects. The following target behaviors were included in the intervention: 1) Responding to showing, pointing, and gaze shifting of adult; 2) Coordinated gaze shifting (i.e., coordinated joint attention); and 3) Pointing (with the purpose of sharing, not requesting). Generalization to setting and parent, follow-up sessions, and social validation measures were also analyzed. RESULTS: Joint attention behaviors were effectively trained and targeted behaviors generalized to other settings. In addition, positive changes were noted by naive observers using social validation measures. CONCLUSIONS: Integrating joint attention training into existing interventions may be important for children with autism. In addition, training parents in these techniques may help to maintain joint attention skills outside of the treatment setting.

Attention↗