Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities

The purpose of this program is to establish and maintain an interdisciplinary, multi-center research platform for scientific collaboration and infrastructure building. The Research Network will develop evidence-based practices for interventions to improve the behavioral health across the lifespan of children and adolescents with ASD/DD as they transition to adulthood, develop guidelines for those interventions, and disseminate information related to such research.

JGCP Investigator Dr. Kathy Bourque recently presented results of a 2-year study funded by NIDCD at the Gatlinburg annual conference in Kansas City and the International Society of Autism Research (INSAR) conference in Stockholm Sweden. Within five districts over the last 2 years, the research team provided a peer-mediated intervention (PMI) to 24 preschoolers with autism with limited or no spoken language, along with 47 peer buddies. The goal was to explore what child characteristics may predict response to a peer-mediated intervention that taught peers to be responsive communication and play partners. Preliminary outcomes for 18 children show that change in how often children communicated to peers in structured play after PMI was significantly related to higher receptive language at baseline. Further, change in how often children took turns communicating and engaged in longer exchanges with peers in free play was significantly related to higher expressive language at baseline. Identifying child behaviors is important to be able to tailor PMIs to be most effective across different preschool social settings.