Diss. (sammanfattning) Göteborg : Göteborgs universitet, 2007. / Härtill 4 uppsatser.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Michigan, 1994.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Michigan, 1994.

The present study examined stimulus control in autistic children. A matching-to-sample procedure was employed in all experiments. In the first part of Experiment I, autistic and control subjects were trained to discriminate between a vertical line and a line tilted at an angle of 33 degrees from vertical. Following training, subjects were given a generalization test to determine the degree of dimensional control by line tilt. In the second part of Experiment I, subjects were trained to discriminate between a vertical line and lines tilted progressively closer to vertical. Experiment II was also a test for the degree of dimensional control by the line tilt. In Experiment I, the autistic subjects took a greater number of trials than the controls to reach the criterion of 24 consecutive correct trials. However, the difference in the number of trials taken by the two groups was not large. There was also little difference between the autistic and control subjects in part two of Experiment I. All of the autistic subjects successfully discriminated between a vertical line and a 2 degree line tilt to a criterion of eight consecutive correct trials. In the generalization tests in Experiments I and II, there was little difference between the autistic and control subjects in dimensional stimulus control. In Experiment III, the autistic subjects were examined for acquisition of a multidimensional discrimination. Both autistic and control subjects were trained to match a standard stimulus with one of four comparison stimuli that were varied in shape and in the presence and absence of a star within the shape. The autistic subjects took a greater number of trials than the controls to reach the criterion of eight consecutive correct trials. However, the difference between the autistic and control subjects in the number of trials taken to reach criterion was not large. In summary, the study found little difference between autistic and control subjects in the acquisition of simple or multidimensional discrimination. As well, there was little difference between the autistics and the controls in dimensional stimulus control. The results of the study suggest that the autistic child's problem is not one of stimulus selectivity. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

No description available.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Tufts University, 2003. / Adviser: Calvin Gidney. Submitted to the Dept. of Child Development. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 60-64). Access restricted to members of the Tufts University community. Also available via the World Wide Web;

Diss. (sammanfattning) Uppsala : Uppsala universitet, 2006. / ISBN ej i pappersutskriften. Härtill 4 uppsatser.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Nevada, Reno, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references. Online version available on the World Wide Web.

Autism prevalence studies have often relied on administrative prevalence or clinical diagnosis as case-identification strategies. We report the incidence of clinical diagnoses of autism spectrum disorders (ASD), versus research-identified autism among residents of Olmsted County, Minnesota, age =21 years, from 1976-1997. The incidence of clinically diagnosed ASD (with 95% CI) was 1.5 per 100,000 (0.0-3.7) in 1980-1983 and 33.1 (22.8-43.3) in 1995-1997, a 22.1-fold increase. In contrast, the incidence of research-identified autism increased from 5.5 (1.4-9.5) per 100,000 to 44.9 (32.9-56.9), an 8.2-fold increase. Only 46.8% of research-identified cases received a clinical diagnosis of ASD. These findings demonstrate the potential for misleading interpretation of results from epidemiologic studies that rely on clinical diagnosis of autism to identify cases.

Tema: No desenvolvimento típico há um movimento constante em direção à maior complexidade lingüística com o decorrer do tempo, mas esta evolução nem sempre é observada nos distúrbios de linguagem. Especificamente nos Transtornos do Espectro Autístico, os estudos têm apresentado resultados conflitantes a respeito da evolução lingüística. Objetivo: Caracterizar a linguagem oral de crianças autistas estudando as variáveis gramaticais, vocabulares e pragmáticas em três momentos distintos: avaliação inicial, após seis e após doze meses de terapia fonoaudiológica. Método: participaram desta pesquisa dez crianças do sexo masculino, com idades entre 2.7 e 11.2 anos. Todos foram diagnosticados por médicos como portadores de Transtornos do Espectro Autístico. Foram realizadas filmagens de 30 minutos de interação entre terapeuta e paciente, em três momentos diferentes (inicial, após 6 e 12 meses de terapia). De cada filmagem, foram transcritos os quinze minutos iniciais para análise do Perfil Funcional da Comunicação. Para a análise dos aspectos gramaticais foram transcritos cem segmentos de fala e estes também foram utilizados como corpus de análise dos aspectos vocabulares. Os dados foram analisados quanto à funcionalidade, aspectos gramaticais e vocabulares e foram comparados entre si longitudinalmente. Resultados: não houve diferença estatisticamente significativa nas variáveis entre os três momentos de coleta, exceto com relação ao número de segmentos frasais não contados em outras categorias. Foram encontradas diferenças significativas entre diferentes variáveis ao longo do período de coleta. Conclusão: as variáveis estudadas mostraram consistência no desempenho do grupo estudado / Language is a symbolic process that allows intra and inter-personal communication. Several authors consider it as an integrated system comprised of sub-systems that must work harmonically and interdependently. These functioning can be observed in normal development but not in cases of language disorder. Among them, the disorders of the autism spectrum (ASD) are complex conditions that include disorders in the areas of cognition and socialization, as well as communication. The unbalance among these areas has been described by many authors. Nevertheless there is no agreement whether it can be also observed among language components. The general purpose of this research was to study vocabulary, grammatical and pragmatic variables on the language of subjects with autism spectrum disorders on three different moments: language therapy onset, after six and twelve months. Subjects were ten individuals with diagnosis included in the Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) with ages varying between 2:7y. and 11:2y. (mean 7:2y.). All participants were of the male gender and had their diagnosis performed by psychiatrists according to the DSM-IV criteria. All were filmed at the start of weekly language therapy process (moment 1), after six months (moment 2) and twelve months latter (moment 3). The method used on the three studies includes the analysis of a spontaneous speech filmed samples of 30 minutes interaction sessions of each child and a language therapist. To the analysis of the pragmatic variables the first 15 minutes of each sample were transcribed. Data refer to number of communicative acts per minute, communicative means used, amount and type of communicative functions expressed, proportion of interpersonal communicative acts and occupation of the communicative context. To the vocabulary analysis the assessment identified psychological state terms (including desire, emotional, cognitive and physical) and designative terms (of action, natural and cultural entity, special and temporal localization, artifacts, names of body parts and persons). Grammatical variables referred to morphemes, grammatical classes, mean length of utterance in morphemes and words, unintelligible segments and non-categorized phrasal segments. To allow the discussion of data the research was subdivided in three studies. Study 1 assessed vocabulary, grammatical and pragmatic variables of the sample, characterizing the group performance along the studied period. Study 2 analyzed the associations between the types of variables along 12 months of language therapy. Study 3 investigated which of the variables predicted linguistic development after twelve months of language therapy. Statistical analysis showed that the item that better identified the changes that occurred during the twelve months of language therapy was the number of non-categorized phrasal segments. Generally the associations among variables were relatively uniform, showing consistent performance. The third study showed that some grammatical variables predicted pragmatic development while vocabulary variables predicted grammatical development. These findings highlighted the language peculiarities of the studied subjects