Children with developmental disabilities tend to demonstrate lower levels of mastery motivation in comparison with typically developing children. The goal of this study was to investigate the effect of physical and social environmental interventions on the mastery motivation of children with disabilities. Participants included 19 children (from two classes) with disabilities between the ages of...

In recent years, people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) have moved from institutionalized settings to local community residences. While deinstitutionalization has yielded quality of life improvements for people with IDD, this transition presents significant health-related challenges. Community clinicians have typically not been trained to provide sound medical care to peo...

The development of health policies is often initiated to meet political objectives, but policies can be, to a great extent, shaped by information found in surveys and other health services research. The following article provides an example of how survey data can be used to shape policy regarding developmental disabilities. It also illustrates how occupational therapists can use the data to adj...

Elopement is a dangerous behavior because children who run away may encounter life-threatening situations (e.g., traffic). We conducted functional analyses of the elopement of 3 children who had been diagnosed with developmental disabilities. The results identified a maintaining reinforcer for the elopement of 1 child, but the data were difficult to interpret for 2 of the children. Subsequent r...

Factors that influence reinforcer choice have been examined in a number of applied studies (e.g., Neef, Mace, Shea, & Shade, 1992; Shore, Iwata, DeLeon, Kahng, & Smith, 1997; Tustin, 1994). However, no applied studies have evaluated the effects of postsession reinforcement on choice between concurrently available reinforcers, even though basic findings indicate that this is an important factor ...

BACKGROUND Autism affects as many as 1 in 88 children. Best practices recommend early identification and intervention for optimal outcomes. Currently, a gap exists between time of first concern and diagnosis, particularly for families living in rural areas. Telemedicine as a tool for assessment and diagnosis of autism is one way to address this disparity. Emerging evidence suggests telemedicine...

Recent research with adults and children with disabilities has yielded procedures for systematically identifying potential reinforcers. Used primarily with adults with developmental disabilities, this methodology, stimulus preference assessment, has been shown to accurately identify stimuli as reinforcers and rank them according to effectiveness. Although preference procedures have been used in...

PURPOSE To examine patterns of sensory responsiveness (i.e., hyperresponsiveness, hyporesponsiveness, and sensory seeking) as factors that may account for variability in social-communicative symptoms of autism and variability in language, social, and communication skill development in children with autism or other developmental disabilities (DDs). METHOD Children with autistic disorder (AD; n...

OBJECTIVE To develop the Family Impact of Childhood Disability Scale (FICD) to assess subjective interpretation or "primary appraisal" of parents regarding the impact of a child with developmental disabilities on the family. METHOD A random sample of 87 families was assessed while children with developmental disabilities were in the preschool years. After 7 years had elapsed, 64 of these fami...

The extant research on nonverbal learning disability (NLD) was analyzed in this review. Studies were defined for use in the review as those that appeared in a peer-reviewed journal and included participants characterized as having NLD. Each study also needed to provide a statistical analysis of dependent variables. An a priori system was used to evaluate the quality of the research. Of the 88 p...