The current study examined eye movement control in autistic (ASD) children. Simple targets were presented in isolation, or with central, parafoveal, or peripheral distractors synchronously. Sixteen children with ASD (47-81 months) and nineteen age and IQ matched typically developing children were instructed to look to the target as accurately and…

Using detailed linguistic analysis, this study examined the expository writing abilities of school-age children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in comparison to neurotypical (NT) children. Associations between executive functioning (EF) and writing ability in children with and without ASD were also explored. Compared to NT peers, children with…

Previous studies measuring praxis abilities in young autistic children have only used praxis measures that were not optimised for autistic individuals. Hence, we used the FAB-R to measure praxis skills in autistic (n = 38) and typically developing (TD) children (n = 38) aged between four and 10 years. Praxis abilities were generally not different…

Objectives: The aim of the study is to distinguish between perceptuomotor and cognitive inflexibility as the source of set-switching difficulties in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Methods: Seventeen adolescents with ASD and 17 neurotypical controls were presented with a computerized sequencing game using colored shapes. The sequence…

We used an adapted alternating treatments design to compare skill acquisition during discrete-trial instruction using immediate reinforcement, delayed reinforcement with immediate praise, and delayed reinforcement for 2 children with autism spectrum disorder. Participants acquired the skills taught with immediate reinforcement; however, delayed…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of different speech-generating device displays and vocabulary organizations on the acquisition of multi-step requesting responses in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Four young children with ASD were taught to use an iPad® application to make requests using both a taxonomically…

Background: Problems with pragmatic aspects of language are well attested in individuals on the autism spectrum. It remains unclear, however, whether figurative language skills improve with language status and whether problems in figurative language are no longer present in highly verbal individuals with autism. Aims: To investigate whether highly…

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) engage in highly perseverative and inflexible behaviours. Technological tools, such as robots, received increased attention as social reinforces and/or assisting tools for improving the performance of children with ASD. The aim of our study is to investigate the role of the robotic toy Keepon in a…

We aimed to disentangle contributions of socio-pragmatic and structural language deficits to narrative competence by comparing the narratives of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD; n=25), non-autistic children with language impairments (LI; n=23), and children with typical development (TD; n=27). Groups were matched for age (6½ to 15…

This study evaluated the effects of programmed treatment-integrity errors on skill acquisition for children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) during discrete-trial instruction (DTI). In Study 1, we identified common treatment-integrity errors that occur during academic instruction in schools. In Study 2, we simultaneously manipulated 3…

Previous research on the use of voice output communication aids (VOCAs) has found a number of positive effects on the behavior of both the VOCA user and their communicative partners. Among these outcomes, studies have found that incorporating speech output into language learning tasks may result in faster and more efficient learning for adults…

This study explored pronoun production and general syntactic abilities in story retelling and story generation among children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Twenty-four children diagnosed with ASD, ages 6;1-14;3 and 17 typically-developing (TD) children ages 5;11-14;4 participated in the study. The linguistic measures for general syntax…

Language-impaired individuals with autism perform poorly on tests such as non-word repetition that are sensitive clinical markers of specific language impairment (SLI). This has fuelled the theory that language impairment in autism represents a co-morbid SLI. However, the underlying cause of these deficits may be different in each disorder. In a…

This study investigates syntax in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), its parallelism with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and its relation to other aspects of cognition. We focus on (1) 3rd person accusative clitic (ACC3) production, a clinical marker of SLI hypothesized to relate to WM, and (2) 1st person accusative clitic (ACC1) production,…

Previous word learning studies suggest that children with autism spectrum disorder may have difficulty understanding pictorial symbols. Here we investigate the ability of children with autism spectrum disorder and language-matched typically developing children to contextualize symbolic information communicated by pictures in a search task that did…