Multiple Choice Tests to Assess Academic Achievements in Down Syndrome and Autism Spectrum Disorder. A Longitudinal Single Case Study

Reading for meaning is one of the most important activities in school and everyday life. The simple view of reading (SVR) has been used as a framework for studies of reading comprehension in individuals with Down syndrome (DS). These tend to show difficulties in reading comprehension despite better developed reading accuracy. Reading comprehension difficulties are influenced by poor oral language. These difficulties are common in individuals with DS and autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but they have never been compared directly. Moreover, the components of reading for comprehension have rarely been investigated in these populations: a better understanding of the nature of reading comprehension difficulties may inform both theory and practice. The aim of this study was to determine whether reading comprehension in the two populations is accounted for by the same component skills and to what extent the reading profile of the two atypical groups differs from that of typically developing children (TD). Fifteen individuals with DS (mean age = 22 years 4 months, SD = 5 years 2 months), 21 with ASD (mean age = 13 years 2 months, SD = 1 year 6 months), and 42 TD children (mean age = 8 years 1 month, SD = 7 months) participated and were assessed on measures of receptive vocabulary, text reading and listening comprehension, oral language comprehension, and reading accuracy. The results showed similar levels in word reading accuracy and in receptive vocabulary in all three groups. By contrast, individuals with DS and ASD showed poorer non-word reading and reading accuracy in context than TD children. Both atypical groups showed poorer listening and reading text comprehension compared to TD children. Reading for comprehension, investigated through a homograph reading accuracy task, showed a different pattern for individuals with DS with respect to the other two groups: they were less sensitive to meaning while reading. According to the SVR, the current results confirm that the two atypical groups have similar profiles that overlap with that of poor comprehenders in which poor oral language comprehension constrains reading for comprehension.

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Parent Coaching via Telepractice for Children From Latinx Backgrounds With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Journal of Special Education Technology ◽

10.1177/01626434211033604 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 016264342110336

Author(s):

Valeria A. Yllades ◽

J. B. Ganz ◽

Sanikan Wattanawongwan ◽

Claudia Dunn ◽

Lauren M. Pierson

Keyword(s):

Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽

Culturally Responsive ◽

Single Case ◽

Autism Spectrum ◽

Language Instruction ◽

Multimodal Communication ◽

Spectrum Disorder ◽

Communication Intervention ◽

Probe Design ◽

Parent Coaching

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder from bilingual homes have to learn and discriminate which language to use across settings and different people. Language instruction is complicated by the core deficits in social communication, which is common in individuals with autism spectrum disorder. Using a single case, multiple probe design across three parent-child dyads between 3 and 6 years from Spanish speaking backgrounds, the present study examined the effect of telepractice-based parent coaching in a multimodal communication intervention. Culturally responsive approaches were integrated within the coaching model, including targeted interview questions. There was also a 15-item rubric used for identifying criteria for culturally responsive research. Findings indicate that the use of multimodal communication intervention via telepractice parent coaching showed promising results. We can conclude that this approach can be a beneficial tool to help family members improve communication for bilingual children with autism spectrum disorder.

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Co-occurring Down Syndrome and Autism Spectrum Disorder: Cognitive, Adaptive, and Behavioral Characteristics

Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders ◽

10.1007/s10803-021-05016-6 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Kathryn R. Bradbury ◽

Emily I. Anderberg ◽

Lark Huang-Storms ◽

Iulia Vasile ◽

Rachel K. Greene ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽

Down Syndrome ◽

Autism Spectrum ◽

Spectrum Disorder ◽

Behavioral Characteristics

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Natural language processing (NLP) tools in extracting biomedical concepts from research articles: a case study on autism spectrum disorder

BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making ◽

10.1186/s12911-020-01352-2 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 20 (S11) ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Jacqueline Peng ◽

Mengge Zhao ◽

James Havrilla ◽

Cong Liu ◽

Chunhua Weng ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽

Natural Language Processing ◽

Natural Language ◽

Language Processing ◽

Clinical Manifestations ◽

Predictive Performance ◽

Autism Spectrum ◽

Spectrum Disorder ◽

Research Articles

Abstract Background Natural language processing (NLP) tools can facilitate the extraction of biomedical concepts from unstructured free texts, such as research articles or clinical notes. The NLP software tools CLAMP, cTAKES, and MetaMap are among the most widely used tools to extract biomedical concept entities. However, their performance in extracting disease-specific terminology from literature has not been compared extensively, especially for complex neuropsychiatric disorders with a diverse set of phenotypic and clinical manifestations. Methods We comparatively evaluated these NLP tools using autism spectrum disorder (ASD) as a case study. We collected 827 ASD-related terms based on previous literature as the benchmark list for performance evaluation. Then, we applied CLAMP, cTAKES, and MetaMap on 544 full-text articles and 20,408 abstracts from PubMed to extract ASD-related terms. We evaluated the predictive performance using precision, recall, and F1 score. Results We found that CLAMP has the best performance in terms of F1 score followed by cTAKES and then MetaMap. Our results show that CLAMP has much higher precision than cTAKES and MetaMap, while cTAKES and MetaMap have higher recall than CLAMP. Conclusion The analysis protocols used in this study can be applied to other neuropsychiatric or neurodevelopmental disorders that lack well-defined terminology sets to describe their phenotypic presentations.

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Assessment and Treatment of Selective Mutism in a Child With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Clinical Case Studies ◽

10.1177/1534650120983451 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 153465012098345

Author(s):

Mirela Cengher ◽

Joy C. Clayborne ◽

Adrianna E. Crouch ◽

Julia T. O’Connor

Keyword(s):

Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽

Social Interaction ◽

Environmental Variables ◽

Behavioral Interventions ◽

Selective Mutism ◽

Autism Spectrum ◽

Spectrum Disorder ◽

Future Research ◽

Assessment And Treatment

Over 60% of children diagnosed with selective mutism are also diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Previous research established that behavioral interventions are effective at increasing speech in children with both diagnoses. However, few studies conducted assessments to determine environmental variables that inhibit speech, and such assessments are necessary for the development of effective and efficient treatments. This case study describes an assessment that evaluated the function(s) of selective mutism. The results confirmed that the participant did not talk to avoid social interaction and that mutism occurred primarily in the presence of multiple, unfamiliar people. Our first treatment focused on increasing tolerance for social interaction, demonstrated by an increase in speech production in the presence of unfamiliar people. Our second treatment focused on increasing qualitative aspects of the participant’s speech (i.e., both responses and initiations). Finally, we taught the participant’s parents to implement the treatment in naturalistic settings, and the participant demonstrated generalization of treatment effects across people and settings. Implications for clinical practice and future research are discussed.

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