Pick of the Week: Power Pen & Learning Cards — Reinforce active learning with immediate feedback

New to our catalog, the Power Pen and accompanying Sight Word Sentences Learning Cards will reinforce active learning and reading practice with immediate feedback through an audio and visual response. The Power Pen sends positive responses to correct answers and encourages redirection for wrong answers, keeping students motivated and on track.

This week, take 15% off the Power Pen and the accompanying Sight Word Sentences Learning Cards — just use our promo code POWERPEN at check-out!

The Power Pen Sight Word Sentences Learning Cards will build reading fluency in young readers by providing practice in recognizing the first 100 sight words, as well as color words, and some common nouns. Picture clues on each card help students decode the nouns. The goal is to choose the correct sight word to complete each sentence! The set comes with 53 double-sided cards.

 
 

*Promotion is valid until July 26, 2016 at 11:59pm ET. Offer cannot be applied to previous purchases, combined with any other offers, transferred, refunded, or redeemed and/or exchanged for cash or credit. Different Roads to Learning reserves the right to change or cancel this promotion at any time. To redeem offer at differentroads.com, enter promo code POWERPEN at checkout.

Science, Pseudoscience and Antiscience Theories In Autism

Finding effective treatments for their children with autism is one of the most difficult challenges parents face. In this month’s ASAT feature, Gina Green, PhD, BCBA-D and Lora Perry, MS, BCBA share insights about the many pseudoscience and antiscience theories and claims that are made about treatments for autism, and suggest some questions parents can ask to help them decide which treatments are most likely to help. To learn more about ASAT, please visit their website at www.asatonline.org. You can also sign up for ASAT’s free newsletter, Science in Autism Treatment, and like them on Facebook!

Science, Pseudoscience and Antiscience Theories in Autism:
Gina Green, PhD, BCBA-D and Lora Perry, MS, BCBA

The Importance of Informed Treatment Decisions
“Your child has autism.” With those words, a parent’s world comes crashing down. What to do? Choosing a treatment is one of the most important decisions the parents of a person with autism will ever have to make. How do parents find truly effective treatment for their child? In an ideal world, the person who dropped the autism diagnosis on a family would provide the answer. But the unfortunate fact is that many who make this diagnosis are not well informed about the wide array of autism treatments, and the degree to which these treatments have proven effective (or not). So until the day comes when parents can count on data based professional guidance, they will need to become very discerning about the various treatments, therapies, and programs that are claimed to be effective for autism. The same applies to those who are concerned with helping families get effective services. There is a need to do a lot of homework, and to do it quickly. Why the urgency? Because the stakes are high, and every moment is precious.

 

Children and adults with autism can learn, and there are effective methods for helping them develop useful skills and lead happy, productive lives. At the same time, research has shown that many currently available interventions for autism are ineffective, even harmful, while others have simply not been tested adequately. Every moment spent on one of those therapies instead of effective intervention is a moment lost forever. Besides, common sense suggests that it is wise for parents and professionals alike to invest in interventions that can be reasonably calculated to produce lasting, meaningful benefits for people with autism—that is, interventions that have withstood scientific testing.
As parents and professionals seek information about autism treatments, they discover a long and perplexing list of “options,” many of them promoted by sincere, well-meaning, persuasive people. Everyone claims that their favorite treatment works, and parents and practitioners are often encouraged to try a little bit of everything. This can be very appealing to people who are seeking anything that might help. How does one choose wisely? To quote the late Carl Sagan, “The issue comes down to the quality of the evidence.” So the first step is to find out exactly what evidence is available to support claims about autism treatments. But all evidence is not created equal. How does one sort pure hype from solid proof, wishful thinking from rigorous testing?
Science, Pseudoscience, and Antiscience in Autism
Approaches to answering fundamental questions about how the world works can be grouped into three broad categories: science, pseudoscience, and antiscience. Science uses specific, time-honored tools to put hunches or hypotheses to logical and empirical tests. Some of those tools include operational definitions of the phenomena of interest; direct, accurate, reliable, and objective measurement; controlled experiments; reliance on objective data for drawing conclusions and making predictions; and independent verification of effects.
Science does not take assertions or observations at face value, but seeks proof. Good scientists differentiate opinions, beliefs, and speculations from demonstrated facts; they don’t make claims without supporting objective data.

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Tip of the Week: Your Child’s Autism Diagnosis Long Term

In the years immediately after a parent learns of a diagnosis of autism, it can be especially challenging to think of your child’s autism diagnosis long-term. But as parents advocate for their child, and as practitioners work with the family to create goals for that child, the long term must be considered. Here are a few suggestions to help with considering the long term, while focusing on short-term goals:

  • Create a vision statement. One of my favorite books is From Emotions to Advocacy: The Special Education Survival Guide by Pam Wright and Pete Wright. This book covers everything parents need to know about advocating for a child with special needs. One of the first things they suggest is creating a vision statement. They describe this as “a visual picture that describes your child in the future.” While this exercise may be challenging, it can help hone in on what is important to you, your family, and your child with special needs in the long term.
  • Look at your child’s behaviors, then try to imagine what it might look like if your child is still engaging in that behavior in five or ten years. Often, behaviors that are not problematic at three are highly problematic at 8 or 13 years old. Such behaviors might include hugging people unexpectedly or (for boys) dropping their pants all the way to the ground when urinating (which could result in bullying at older ages). While it is easy to prioritize other behaviors ahead of these, it’s important to remember that the longer a child has engaged in a behavior, the more difficult it may be to change.
  • Talk to practitioners who work with older students. Many practitioners only work with a certain age group of children. While they may be an expert for the age group they work with, it may be helpful to speak with a practitioner who works with older kids and ask what skill deficits they often see, what recommendations they may make, and what skills are essential for independence at older ages.
  • Talk with other parents. Speaking with other parents of children with special needs can be hugely beneficial. Over the years, I’ve worked with hundreds of parents who are spending countless hours focusing on providing the best possible outcomes for their children. And while it’s impossible to prepare for everything that will come in your child’s life, it may be helpful to find out what has blindsided other parents as their children with special needs have grown up.

WRITTEN BY SAM BLANCO, MSED, BCBA

Sam is an ABA provider for students ages 3-12 in NYC. Working in education for ten years with students with Autism Spectrum Disorders and other developmental delays, Sam has developed strategies for achieving a multitude of academic, behavior, and social goals. Sam is currently pursuing her PhD in Applied Behavior Analysis at Endicott College.

Pick of the Week: NEW! Cooperative Games — Teach teamwork and group problem-solving

NEW to our catalog are a set of cooperative games that foster teamwork, shared decision-making, and many more valuable skills, as learners work together to solve a common obstacle in the games. This week, you can save 15% on these cooperative games by using our promo code TEAMWORK at check-out.

Cooperative Games Subheader

In cooperative games, everyone plays together, no one is left out, and everyone has fun! Players work together as a team against a common obstacle, not against each other. Cooperative games emphasize play, not competition. Kids work together, they help each other and, most importantly, they play for fun! Cooperative games teach:

  • Emotional development
  • Shared decision making
  • Creative problem solving
  • A sense of community
  • Positive self-esteem
  • Playfulness
  • Cooperation

For kids who love dinosaurs, the Dinosaur Escape Game is a perfect way to teach strategy, memory, problem-solving, and following directions, as players work together to move all three dinosaurs safely to Dinosaur Island before the volcano erupts. Roll the die, move the dinosaurs around the board, uncover the matching dinosaurs under the fern tokens. But if you turn over the T-Rex, run! If players can find and help all three lost dinosaurs escape to Dinosaur Island before completing the 3-D volcano puzzle, everyone wins!

DRG_014_Dinosaur_Escape_Game_Board

The game comes with 1 game board, 3 dinosaur movers, 1 die, 12 fern tokens, 5 volcano puzzle pieces and volcano stand.

Younger learners will have an enjoyable time with the Friends and Neighbors Helping Game, as they work together to make matches between characters in distress and ways to help them!  Can players help a little girl who’s sad because she’s standing out in the rain, or a boy who’s afraid of the dark? Children encounter characters with a problem and reach into the Helping Bag to pull out a token — can the token help someone on the game board? If so, it’s a match!

In playing the game and reading about the feelings and needs of the characters, parents can help their children recognize feelings in others — the first step to building empathy. The game comes with 4 game boards, 14 tokens, 1 Helping Bag, 1 Stop Sign board, parent guide, and a Friends and Neighbors book.

Don’t forget! You can take 15% off either of these new cooperative games by applying our promo code TEAMWORK when you place your order online or over the phone with us at (800) 853-1057.

*Promotion is valid until July 5, 2016 at 11:59pm ET. Offer cannot be applied to previous purchases, combined with any other offers, transferred, refunded, or redeemed and/or exchanged for cash or credit. Different Roads to Learning reserves the right to change or cancel this promotion at any time. To redeem offer at differentroads.com, enter promo code TEAMWORK at checkout.

How Siblings Of Children With Autism Can Help Improve Behaviors

When I first came across this study, “Behavioral Training for Siblings of Autistic Children,” I was immediately hesitant. There’s something about the idea of sibling-as-therapist that makes me cringe a little bit. When I work with the families of children with autism, the hope is that the siblings of the child with autism still have a childhood without being pushed into the role of caregiver. And I also want the child with autism to have independence and feel like an individual who is heard, which may be more challenging if their siblings are issuing demands just as a parent or teacher would. But as I read the study, I realized that the work they completed had incredible social significance.

In the study, there were three pairs of siblings. The ages of the children with autism ranged from 5 years old to 8 years old. The ages of the siblings ranged from 8 years old to 13 years old. The researchers trained each sibling of a child with autism how to teach basic skills, such as discriminating between different coins, identifying common objects, and spelling short words. As part of this training, the researchers showed videos of one-on-one sessions in which these skills were taught, utilizing techniques such as reinforcement, shaping, and chaining. What the researchers did next was the part that really stood out to me: they discussed with the siblings how to use these techniques in other environments. Finally, the researchers observed the sibling working with their brother/sister with autism and provided coaching on the techniques.

It should be noted here that the goal of the study was not to have the siblings become the teacher of basic skills. Instead, it was to provide a foundation of skills in behavioral techniques for the sibling to use in other settings with the hope of overall improvement in the behaviors of the child with autism. The researchers demonstrated that, after training, the siblings were able to effectively use prompts, reinforcement, and discrete trials to effectively teach new skills. But, perhaps the most meaningful aspects of the study were the changes reported by both siblings and parents. The researchers provide a table showing comments about the sibling with autism before and after the training. One of the most striking comments after the training was, “He gets along better if I know how to ask him” (p. 136). Parents reported that they were pleased with the results and found the training beneficial.

This study provides excellent evidence that structured training for siblings has real potential for making life a little easier for the whole family. The idea isn’t that they become the therapist, but instead that knowledge truly is power.

References

Schriebman, L., O’Neill, R.E. & Koegel, R.L. (1983). Behavioral training for siblings of autistic children. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis. 16(2), 129-138.

WRITTEN BY SAM BLANCO, MSED, BCBA

Sam is an ABA provider for students ages 3-12 in NYC. Working in education for ten years with students with Autism Spectrum Disorders and other developmental delays, Sam has developed strategies for achieving a multitude of academic, behavior, and social goals. Sam is currently pursuing her PhD in Applied Behavior Analysis at Endicott College.

 

Using Smartphones and Tablets in Video Modeling For Autism

 

There are tons of articles and lists about the best apps for kids with autism. However, you may be missing out on one of the best possible uses of smartphones and tablets for improving services for your learner: the camera app that is already built into the device.

A wealth of research has shown the efficacy of using video modeling to teach children and adults with autism, to train staff on how to implement programs and procedures, and to train parents on interventions. Smartphones and tablets make creating such videos much easier than it was in the past. Here’s why you should be using smartphones and tablets for video modeling for autism, as well as a few things to consider:

  • Be sure you have named the steps of the procedure or program you are modeling. It may be helpful to have those steps written down for the person using the video model.
  • If you are a teacher or practitioner recording your learner, be sure you have consent from the individual’s guardian(s). Also, check in about any recording policies at your school or center.
  • If you are a parent struggling to implement an intervention, request that the teacher or practitioner create a video model. It’s helpful to see someone else doing and to be able to refer back to that video as necessary.
  • If you are taking video of your learner for the first time, you may want to set up the tablet or smartphone without taking video for a few sessions before you actually create the video model. This will help avoid problems with the learner changing his or her behavior because a new (and often desirable) object is in the environment.
  • Consult the literature! As I mentioned before, there is a huge amount of research on video modeling. In recent years, it has been used to teach children with autism to make requests (Plavnick & Ferreri, 2011), increase treatment integrity for teachers implementing interventions (DiGennaro-Reed, Codding, Catania, & Maguire, 2010), teach children how to engage in pretend play (MacDonald, Sacramone, Mansfield, Wiltz, & Ahearn, 2009), increase social initiations of children with autism (Nikopoulos & Keenan, 2004), and more.

With the easy-to-use technology at our fingertips every day, video modeling is a simple and efficient way to demonstrate a new skill. This basic use of smartphones and tablets should not be overlooked because it can have a huge impact on teaching learners with autism new skills or helping parents and staff implement stronger programs and interventions.

References

DiGennaro-Reed, F. D., Codding, R., Catania, C. N., & Maguire, H. (2010). Effects of video modeling on treatment integrity of behavioral interventions. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 43(2), 291–295.

MacDonald, R., Sacramone, S,. Mansfield, R., Witz, K., & Ahearn, W.H. (2009). Using video modeling to teach reciprocal pretend play to children with autism. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 42(1), 43–55.

Nikopoulous, C.K. & Keenan, M. (2004). Effects of video modeling on social initiations by children with autism. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 37(1), 93–96.

Plavnick, J. B., & Ferreri, S. J. (2011). Establishing verbal repertoires in children with autism using function-based video modeling. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 44(4), 747–766.

WRITTEN BY SAM BLANCO, MSED, BCBA

Sam is an ABA provider for students ages 3-12 in NYC. Working in education for ten years with students with Autism Spectrum Disorders and other developmental delays, Sam has developed strategies for achieving a multitude of academic, behavior, and social goals. Sam is currently pursuing her PhD in Applied Behavior Analysis at Endicott College.

Pick of the Week: Social Skills by Dr. Jed Baker – 20% Off!

Save on these fantastic social skills materials from Dr. Jed Baker this week! Just use our promo code SOCIAL20 at the check-out.

The Social Skills Picture Book is a photographic picture book that depicts children demonstrating various social skills broken down into concrete steps. This book looks at the importance of visual aides in teaching children with autism. Different methods of teaching social skills are outlined, explaining initial instruction, review and generalization of skills. Some of the skills illustrated include:

  • Sharing
  • Taking Turns
  • Tone of Voice
  • Asking to Play
  • Showing Understanding

A concluding chapter addresses promoting peer acceptance through sensitivity training programs for students of various age groups and school staff. This is a complete and practical resource on social skills training for students of all ages!

The Social Skills Training Manual is a comprehensive how-to manual for teaching and developing social and communication skills in students with Asperger Syndrome and related pervasive developmental disorders. This manual covers 70 social skills that most commonly cause difficulty for individuals with autism spectrum disorders. Each skill is presented with activity sheets listing how to demonstrate, practice and reinforce the skill, both in the classroom and at home, and also contains a reproducible handout.

 

“Be a Friend: Songs for Social Skills Training” contains 16 original songs that teach invaluable social skills on an audio CD. Research has shown that learning occurs more rapidly when children are highly motivated to attend. The catchy tunes include:

  1. Be A Friend
  2. Hello
  3. Personal Space
  4. Eye Contact
  5. Volume of Speech
  6. Sharing
  7. Turns
  8. Ask to Play
  9. Compromise
  10. Complement
  11. Sensitive Topics
  12. Teasing
  13. Accepting No
  14. Making Mistakes
  15. Calm Down
  16. Feelings

Pick of the Week: Executive Function Books & Curricula

Executive function is a set of mental processes that help us organize, make plans, focus our attention, remember things, and juggle multiple tasks. This week, you can SAVE 15%* on any of our books on executive function in students with autism. Use use our promo code EXECFXN at check-out!

Executive Function Books

Unstuck & On Target is a robust classroom-based curriculum book that helps educators and service providers teach executive function skills to high-functioning students with autism through ready-to-use lessons, materials lists, and intervention tips that reinforce lessons throughout the school day. Topics touched upon include flexibility vocabulary, coping strategies, setting goals, and flexibility in friendship. Lessons will target specific skills, free up the instructor’s time, fit easily into any curriculum, ensure generalization to strengthen home-school connection, and best of all, make learning fun and engaging for students in the classroom! The guide also comes with an accompanying CD-ROM that contains printable game cards, student worksheets, and other materials for each lesson.

Solving Executive Function Challenges is a practical resource for parents, teachers, and therapists helping high-functioning students with autism improve on their executive function skills. To be used with or without the curriculum Unstuck & On Target, this book contains strategies to teach EF skills, including setting and achieving goals and being flexible, as well as ideas for accommodations and actions to address common problems, such as keeping positive, avoiding overload, and coping.

Executive Skills in Children and Adolescents explains how executive function processes develop and why they play such a key role in children’s behavior and school performance. With more than 24 reproducible checklists, questionnaires, planning sheets, and assessment tools, this manual provides step-by-step guidelines and practical tools to promote executive skill development by implementing environmental modifications, individualized instruction, coaching, and whole-class interventions.

*Promotion is valid until May 24, 2016 at 11:59pm EST. Offer cannot be applied to previous purchases, combined with anyother offers, transferred, refunded, or redeemed and/or exchanged for cash or credit. Different Roads to Learning reserves the right to change or cancel this promotion at any time. To redeem offer at differentroads.com, enter promo code EXECFXN at checkout.

How Occupational Therapy Can Benefit ABA Programs

This month, we’re proud to feature a wonderful piece from the Association for Science in Autism Treatment (ASAT), written by Amy McGinnis Stango, MS, OTR, MS, BCBA, on the benefits of occupational therapy as a supplement to your child’s ABA program. Amy is a nationally registered occupational therapist and board certified behavior analyst, and provides consultative direct and consultative services to families, clinics and schools across the country and internationally. She is also the co-author of Assessing Language and Learning with Pictures (ALL PICS), an assessment tool designed to make administration of the VB-MAPP more accurate, efficient, and cost-effective for schools, clinics, agencies, and private practitioners.

To learn more about ASAT, please visit their website at www.asatonline.org. You can also sign up for ASAT’s free newsletter, Science in Autism Treatment, and like them on Facebook!


My child is enrolled in an ABA-based program where he also receives some OT services. How can occupational therapy benefit my child’s ABA program?

Answered by Amy McGinnis Stango, MS, OTR, MS, BCBA

Occupational therapy (OT) can be beneficial as a supplemental treatment to your child’s ABA program. The goal of occupational therapy is to support an individual’s health and participation in life through engagement in occupations or everyday tasks (AOTA, 2008). The occupational therapy process begins with an evaluation. The evaluation helps to determine whether your child has met developmental milestones in a wide variety of occupations. The occupational therapy evaluation can help your child’s behavior analyst choose developmentally appropriate goals to be included in his ABA program. The OT evaluation may also be helpful in understanding why a child struggles with a particular task. For example, if your child struggles with handwriting, the evaluation can determine whether this difficulty stems from an inappropriate grasp, poor posture, muscle weakness, visual memory, or lack of eye-hand coordination. Pediatric occupational therapy typically addresses the following domains:

  • Play
  • Activities of Daily Living
  • Education
  • Social Participation

Play is the primary occupation of childhood and is often an area of need for children with autism. Occupational therapy can be effective in helping children learn new play skills (Stagnitti, O’Connor, & Sheppard, 2012). Many pediatric occupational therapists use a play-based approach to their sessions, exposing children to a variety of toys, games, and different ways to play. If your child engages in repetitive play behaviors or has limited interests, the occupational therapist may be helpful in finding other activities that share similar sensory properties of the toys your child already enjoys. Some of the sensory activities used in occupational therapy may function as reinforcers, which could be used in your child’s ABA sessions as well (McGinnis, Blakely, Harvey, Hodges & Rickards, 2013).

Occupational therapists typically include an assessment of activities of daily living (ADLs) as part of the evaluation. ADLs include those basic self-care tasks that an individual performs each day, such as eating, grooming, dressing, and using the bathroom. Occupational therapy can help to build the strength, coordination, and perception skills needed to perform these tasks. For example, if your child has oral motor deficits, occupational therapy can help your child learn the mouth movements necessary for chewing and drinking (Eckman, Williams, Riegel, & Paul, 2008; Gibbons, Williams, & Riegel, 2007). Occupational therapy can also help older children and adolescents learn more advanced ADLs, like independent bathing (Schillam, Beeman & Loshin, 1983). Occupational therapists are trained in identifying multiple ways to perform routine tasks, and can recommend an approach that will work best for your child and can be integrated into your routines at home (Kellegrew, 1998).

As individuals with autism age, occupational therapists can help teach skills that will lead to greater independence at home and in the community (McInerney & McInerney, 1992). These include preparing meals, managing money, shopping and using public transportation. Often these skills are more complex and may require an activity or task analysis that breaks the task down into simpler steps. With extensive training in developing task analyses, occupational therapists can share these analyses with your child’s ABA team so that skills can be taught across settings. If tasks are still difficult, an occupational therapist may recommend adaptive equipment to make a task easier. Occupational therapy can also help your child participate more fully in his or her educational program. Occupational therapy can help young children acquire tasks such as coloring and cutting (Case-Smith, Heaphy, Marr, Galvin, Koch, Ellis, & Perez, 1998), as well as help older children acquire skills such as handwriting (Denton, Cope, & Moser, 2006). If your child has difficulty moving through the school setting or actively participating in movement activities, occupational therapy can help your child develop functional mobility skills. Continue reading

Is Inclusive Education Right for Children with Disabilities?

This week, we’re honored to feature an article by Edward Fenske, MAT, EdS, the former executive director of the Princeton Child Development Institute, who shares his critique on the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services and Education’s joint statement on inclusive education for all children with disabilities. Ed’s extensive experience in delivering intervention to children with autism, support services to their families, and training and supervision to professional staff spans 39 years. His published works address home programming, language development, and early intervention.

Is Inclusive Education Right for My Child with Disabilities?
by Edward Fenske, MAT, EdS
Princeton Child Development Institute

On September 14, 2015 the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Education issued a joint policy statement recommending inclusive education for all children with disabilities begin during early childhood and continue into schools, places of employment, and the broader community. The policy includes numerous assertions about the educational benefits and legal foundation of inclusion and a lengthy list of supporting evidence. This paper examines some of these assertions, the supporting evidence, and comments on the departments’ recommendation.

 

Assertion: Children with disabilities, including those with the most significant disabilities and the highest needs, can make significant developmental and learning progress in inclusive settings.

Supporting Evidence: Green, Terry, & Gallagher (2014). This study compared the acquisition of literacy skills by 77 pre-school students with disabilities in inclusive classrooms with 77 non-disabled classmates. Skill acquisition was assessed using pre/post intervention scores on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, Third Edition (Dunn & Dunn, 1997) and the Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening Prekindergarten (Invernizzi, Sullivan, Meier, & Swank, 2004). The results found that children with disabilities made significant gains that mirrored the progress of their typical classmates, although the achievement gap between the two groups remained. Participants had a variety of diagnoses (e.g., developmental delays, autism, pervasive developmental disorder-not otherwise specified, speech and language impairments, cognitive impairments, and Down syndrome). There were several requirements for participation in this study that would appear to severely limit conclusions. Participants with disabilities were functioning at social, cognitive, behavioral and linguistic levels to the extent that their Individual Education Program (IEP) teams recommended participation in language and literacy instruction in the general education classroom with typical peers-an indication that these skills were considered prerequisite to meaningful inclusion.

A further restriction for participation was that only data from children who were able to complete the tasks according to standardized administrative format were included in the study. It is therefore unclear whether all students with disabilities in these inclusive preschool classes made significant developmental and learning progress. The authors suggest that had the lower achieving students received explicit, small group or individual instruction, the achievement gap between typically developing students and children with disabilities may have been narrowed. We can therefore conclude that regular instruction provided in the inclusive preschool classes in this study was not sufficient for all students with disabilities. Furthermore, because the results were not separated by disability, it is not possible to determine whether there was a significant difference in learning across disabilities.

Assertion: Some studies have shown that children with disabilities who were in inclusive settings experienced greater cognitive and communication development than children with disabilities who were in separate settings, with this being particularly apparent among children with more significant disabilities.

Supporting Evidence: Rafferty, Piscitelli, & Boettcher (2003). This study described the progress in acquiring language skills and social competency of 96 preschoolers with disabilities attending a community-based program. Sixty-eight participants received instruction in inclusive classes and 28 attended segregated special education classes. Progress was assessed using pretest and posttest scores from the Preschool Language Scale-3 (Zimmerman, Steiner, & Pond, 1992) and the Social Skills Rating System (SSRS)–Teacher Version (Gresham & Elliott, 1990). Level of disability (i.e., “severely disabled” or “not severe”) was determined by scores on the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence (WPPSI-R), but the authors did not provide any information about the participants’ specific clinical diagnoses. Posttest scores were comparable for “not severe” students in both class types. Children with “severe” disabilities in inclusive classes had higher posttest scores in language development and social skills than their peers in segregated classes, but had higher rates of problem behavior. The extent to which problem behavior interfered with learning for both typical children and those with disabilities was not addressed. Problem behavior, such as tantrums, aggression, stereotypy, self-injury, property destruction and defiance; is displayed by some children with disabilities. These behaviors have very different implications for preschool-aged children than for older children. In this writer’s experience, severe problem behavior is extremely resistant to change when not successfully treated during preschool years and may ultimately result in more restrictive academic, vocational and residential placement during adolescence and adulthood. The significance of any academic gains by children with disabilities in inclusive settings should be carefully weighed against the long-term implications of unchecked maladaptive behavior.

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