The PDD Behavior Inventory (PDDBI) has recently been shown, in a large multisite study, to discriminate well between autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and other groups when its scores were examined using a machine learning tool, Classification and Regression Trees (CART). Discrimination was good for toddlers, preschoolers, and school-age children;…

Producing pronouns involves linguistic and social-cognitive knowledge because children must learn words and understand pronouns' changing referents. This study examined pronoun production longitudinally in young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD; n = 15), whose social-cognition might impair pronoun use, and in typically developing (TD; n…

Children with dysarthria due to cerebral palsy (CP) present with decreased vowel space area and reduced word intelligibility. Although a robust relationship exists between vowel space and word intelligibility, little is known about the intelligibility of vowels in this population. This exploratory study investigated the intelligibility of American…

This ethnography documents the everyday experiences of the parents of children diagnosed with autism with whom I conducted fieldwork from April 2010 through September 2011. It describes the daily activities of self proclaimed "autism parents" living in Queens, New York, who tirelessly campaign for their children's medical, educational,…

Objective: Little is known about the effect of social context and gender on persistence of "attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder" (ADHD) in children of early and middle school years. The study compared persistence of "DSM-IV" ADHD and ADHD not otherwise specified (NOS) over 2 years in two groups of Puerto Rican children.…

The present study was designed to investigate the discriminant validity of the Devereux Scales of Mental Disorders (DSMD; Naglieri, LeBuffe, & Pfeiffer, 1994) in relation to a widely used behavior rating scale, the Teacher Report Form (TRF; Achenbach, 1991), in children and adolescents with emotional disturbance (ED). A matched sample of 148…

This text examines the characteristics that define autism: impairments in communication; abnormal social development; and clinically significant odd behaviors. Specific chapters include: (1) Neural Mechanisms in Autism (Andrew W. Zimmerman and Barry Gordon); (2) Epidemiology of Autism and Other Pervasive Developmental Disorders: Current…