A deficit in social skills often makes teaching academics a second thought when instructing students with autism. Peer-mediated instruction has been well studied for increasing academic skills across various disabilities and social skills for students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The purpose of this study was to determine the effect size…

In this study, we conducted a multilevel meta-analysis to determine whether the self-regulated strategy development (SRSD) approach to teaching writing to students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) improves significantly the number of words written and overall quality of writing, whether the effects of SRSD were consistent or variable across…

The main purpose of this study was to review pivotal response training and examine the efficacy of pivotal response training for children with autism spectrum disorder. The other purposes of study were to (a) examine the characteristics of participants and components of the intervention in which pivotal response training was used; (b) determine…

This article reports the results of a meta-analysis of technology-based intervention studies for children with autism spectrum disorders. We conducted a systematic review of research that used a pre-post design to assess innovative technology interventions, including computer programs, virtual reality, and robotics. The selected studies provided…

Social stories play a significant part in the teaching skills and behaviors to children with ASD who lack social skills. The purpose of this study is to analyze studies in which social stories were used for teaching social skills to individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). The present study includes a descriptive review and meta-analysis…

Social Stories[TM] are a popular intervention used with individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and other disabilities. Most of the research conducted to date has involved small "n" designs. Previous meta-analyses of this research have involved relatively small numbers of studies and issues such as selection bias and failure to evaluate…

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often struggle with features of adult life, including obtaining and maintaining gainful employment. Many factors seem to contribute to this issue, such as: (a) access to financial resources, (b) interaction between the unique characteristics of ASD and employment settings, and (c) curriculum and…

We analyzed several studies of non-verbal communication (prosody and facial expressions) completed in our lab and conducted a secondary analysis to compare performance on receptive vs. expressive tasks by adolescents with ASD and their typically developing peers. Results show a significant between-group difference for the aggregate score of…

Research and services continue to expand to community-based programs serving individuals diagnosed with autism. A focus of great interest in those efforts is that of language acquisition and functional usage. For the purpose of this evaluation, language acquisition interventions are grouped into two broad categories, contrived and naturalistic.…

Social skills deficits are a central feature of autism spectrum disorders (ASD). This meta-analysis of 55 single-subject design studies examined the effectiveness of school-based social skills interventions for children and adolescents with ASD. Intervention, maintenance, and generalization effects were measured by computing the percentage of…

This critical review examines 10 controlled studies in which traditional operant behavioral procedures were compared with normalized interventions for teaching language to young children with autism. It concluded that normalized language training was substantially more effective than discrete-trial training and yielded more positive parental…

Efficacy research on video based instruction for children with autism is a promising area for practitioners and researchers. Researchers are successfully using video to teach a variety of social and functional skills. This literature review synthesizes these findings and examines critical features of each of the studies that contribute most to the…