Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) refers to a heterogeneous neurological condition characterized by repetitive and restrictive behaviors and social communication deficits. ASD diagnoses are at a record high, at approximately 1 in 59 children according to the US Center for Disease Control. Currently, there are no available interventions that effectively treat the core symptoms of ASD. All pharmaceutical options address comorbid side effects of ASD but not core deficits and are particularly associated with negative side effects. Additionally, there are economic and geographic barriers that can prevent families of individuals with ASD from seeking or receiving effective interventions. Many of the available interventions are extremely costly, time-consuming, and age dependent. These factors, as well as others, have led to an increase in families independently utilizing complementary and alternative interventions. Due to the large amount of misinformation available on the Internet, families have become more susceptible to trying alternative forms of interventions that have not been scientifically proven as effective, and in some cases, are significantly detrimental. Thus, the need for accessible and inexpensive evidence-based nonpharmaceutical interventions is critical and must be addressed. Fortunately, recent groundbreaking research has discovered two strains of probiotics, Bacteroides fragilis and Lactobacillus reuteri, that have been shown to ameliorate behavioral and social deficits respectively, in validated ASD mouse models in a non-age-dependent manner. Probiotic intervention with a combination of these specific strains would effectively target both repetitive behaviors and social deficits, core ASD symptoms, and provide families with an accessible and inexpensive form of intervention. The mechanisms underlying the efficacy of these probiotics are thought to be associated with the gastrointestinal (GI) system and the oxytocin pathway. This study seeks to examine the necessity of accessible nonpharmaceutical interventions and to provide an effective intervention that is neither expensive or age dependent. This study also aims to provide greater insight into the pathways and systems in which these probiotics operate.

This study employed a multiple probe across settings design to evaluate the effectiveness of Power Cards, as they were originally designed by Gagnon (2001), on the conversational behaviors for two high school students diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Data were collected on the percentage of conversational behaviors engaged in per session, as well as the number of times the participants accessed their Power Card during conversations, and the frequency of additional questions or comments made by the participants. Results of this study indicated that Power Cards improved conversational behaviors for both participants in their first setting. While covariation occurred across untrained settings for both participants, therefore weakening the experimental control of this study, promising results were produced for Sunday practitioners and teachers.

Music therapists frequently work with clients with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) who use Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC). The purpose of this study was to gather information on music therapists’ current experiences with AAC training as well as music therapists’ perceptions of their own communication abilities when communicating with clients who have ASD using their preferred AAC system. The researcher invited 7,279 board-certified music therapists to participate in this study via email, of which 366 completed the survey. Participants reported most often providing services to children and adolescents with ASD, and frequently using electronic AAC and electronic apps with their clients with ASD. The majority (71.2%) of participants stated that they would like additional training in the use of AAC. Of the music therapists who had participated in previous AAC training, many had received training at work or by an SLP or other certified professional. Results of this study provide information about the current practices and perceptions of board-certified music therapists working with clients with ASD.

Children with autism, by diagnostic criteria, experience a lack of age appropriate play and social skills (American Psychiatric Association, 1994). This study evaluated three typically developing peer's ability to implement Pivotal Response Training strategies during recess with a child with autism in their third grade class. A concurrent multiple probe baseline across peers design was used to assess peers ability to implement Pivotal Response Training strategies with the target child and the effects of intervention on the play and communication behavior of the target child. Generalization measures were taken in an untrained environment. Measures of social validity in the form of peer interviews and teacher questionnaire were completed. Results displayed that peers were able to use Pivotal Response Training strategies during recess with a child with autism. During post-training/intervention and follow-up sessions the child with autism engaged in higher levels of communication to peers, and slightly lower levels of communication to self. The target child also experienced a decreasing trend in levels of solitary play, an increasing trend in levels of play with peer trainers and levels of parallel play remained near baseline levels. Peers were also able to generalize these skills to an untrained environment to an extent.

This thesis presents a study to develop and explore the use of a computerized system that provided automated prompts to children with ASD during the completion of a self-care activity (handwashing). A Wizard-of-Oz experiment was implemented using an A-B experimental design. During the baseline phase (A) the child’s caregiver was asked to guide the child through handwashing, in the intervention phase (B) the system guided the child. The results showed that the system was not very successful to guide the child. He tended to get distracted very easily presenting off-task behaviour, which resulted in needing assistance from the caregiver. The data obtained showed that during the intervention phase the assistance from the caregiver consisted mostly of verbal instructions versus the hand over hand guidance observed during B phase. From the data analyses and reviewed literature some improvements and redesigns were suggested which could help develop a more automatic prompting system.

This thesis presents a study to develop and explore the use of a computerized system that provided automated prompts to children with ASD during the completion of a self-care activity (handwashing). A Wizard-of-Oz experiment was implemented using an A-B experimental design. During the baseline phase (A) the child’s caregiver was asked to guide the child through handwashing, in the intervention phase (B) the system guided the child. The results showed that the system was not very successful to guide the child. He tended to get distracted very easily presenting off-task behaviour, which resulted in needing assistance from the caregiver. The data obtained showed that during the intervention phase the assistance from the caregiver consisted mostly of verbal instructions versus the hand over hand guidance observed during B phase. From the data analyses and reviewed literature some improvements and redesigns were suggested which could help develop a more automatic prompting system.

Aquest treball és una contribució a l'estudi de diferents problemes que sorgeixen de dues àrees fortament connexes de la Teoria de Grafs: etiquetaments i descomposicions. Molts etiquetaments de grafs deuen el seu origen als presentats l'any 1967 per Rosa. Un d'aquests etiquetaments, àmpliament conegut com a etiquetament graceful, va ser definit originalment com a eina per atacar la conjectura de Ringel, la qual diu que el graf complet d'ordre 2m+1 pot ser descompost en m copies d'un arbre donat de mida m. Aquí, estudiem etiquetaments relacionats que ens donen certes aproximacions a la conjectura de Ringel, així com també a una altra conjectura de Graham i Häggkvist que, en una forma dèbil, demana la descomposició d'un graf bipartit complet per un arbre donat de mida apropiada. Les principals contribucions que hem fet en aquest tema són la prova de la darrera conjectura per grafs bipartits complets del doble de mida essent descompostos per arbres de gran creixement i un nombre primer d'arestes, i la prova del fet que cada arbre és un subarbre gran de dos arbres pels quals les dues conjectures es compleixen respectivament. Aquests resultats estan principalment basats en una aplicació del mètode polinomial d'Alon. Un altre tipus d'etiquetaments, els etiquetaments magic, també són tractats aquí. Motivats per la noció de quadrats màgics de Teoria de Nombres, en aquest tipus d'etiquetaments volem asignar nombres enters a parts del graf (vèrtexs, arestes, o vèrtexs i arestes) de manera que la suma de les etiquetes assignades a certes subestructures del graf sigui constant. Desenvolupem tècniques basades en particions de certs conjunts d'enters amb algunes condicions additives per construir etiquetaments cycle-magic, un nou tipus d'etiquetament introduït en aquest treball i que estén la noció clàssica d'etiquetament magic. Els etiquetaments magic no donen cap descomposició de grafs, però les tècniques usades per obtenir-los estan al nucli d'un altre problema de descomposició, l'ascending subgraph decomposition (ASD). Alavi, Boals, Chartrand, Erdös i Oellerman, van conjecturar l'any 1987 que tot graf té un ASD. Aquí, estudiem l'ASD per grafs bipartits, una classe de grafs per la qual la conjectura encara no ha estat provada. Donem una condició necessària i una de suficient sobre la seqüència de graus d'un estable del graf bipartit de manera que admeti un ASD en que cada factor sigui un star forest. Les tècniques utilitzades estan basades en l'existència de branca-acoloriments en multigrafs bipartits. També tractem amb el sumset partition problem, motivat per la conjectura ASD, que demana una partició de [n] de manera que la suma dels elements de cada part sigui igual a un valor prescrit. Aquí donem la millor condició possible per la versió modular del problema que ens permet provar els millors resultats ja coneguts en el cas enter per n primer. La prova està de nou basada en el mètode polinomial. / This work is a contribution to the study of various problems that arise from two strongly connected areas of the Graph Theory: graph labelings and graph decompositions. Most graph labelings trace their origins to the ones presented in 1967 by Rosa. One of these labelings, widely known as the graceful labeling, originated as a means of attacking the conjecture of Ringel, which states that the complete graph of order 2m+1 can be decomposed into m copies of a given tree of size m. Here, we study related labelings that give some approaches to Ringel's conjecture, as well as to another conjecture by Graham and Häggkvist that, in a weak form, asks for the decomposition of a complete bipartite graph by a given tree of appropriate size. Our main contributions in this topic are the proof of the latter conjecture for double sized complete bipartite graphs being decomposed by trees with large growth and prime number of edges, and the proof of the fact that every tree is a large subtree of two trees for which both conjectures hold respectively. These results are mainly based on a novel application of the so-called polynomial method by Alon. Another kind of labelings, the magic labelings, are also treated. Motivated by the notion of magic squares in Number Theory, in these type of labelings we want to assign integers to the parts of a graph (vertices, edges, or vertices and edges) in such a way that the sums of the labels assigned to certain substructures of the graph remain constant. We develop techniques based on partitions of certain sets of integers with some additive conditions to construct cycle-magic labelings, a new brand introduced in this work that extends the classical magic labelings. Magic labelings do not provide any graph decomposition, but the techniques that we use to obtain them are the core of another decomposition problem, the ascending subgraph decomposition (ASD). In 1987, was conjectured by Alavi, Boals. Chartrand, Erdös and Oellerman that every graph has an ASD. Here, we study ASD of bipartite graphs, a class of graphs for which the conjecture has not been shown to hold. We give a necessary and a sufficient condition on the one sided degree sequence of a bipartite graph in order that it admits an ASD by star forests. Here the techniques are based on the existence of edge-colorings in bipartite multigraphs. Motivated by the ASD conjecture we also deal with the sumset partition problem, which asks for a partition of [n] in such a way that the sum of the elements of each part is equal to a prescribed value. We give a best possible condition for the modular version of the sumset partition problem that allows us to prove the best known results in the integer case for n a prime. The proof is again based on the polynomial method.

In this study, zinc oxide (ZnO) nanotip and nanorod were grown on glass substrate by aqueous solution deposition (ASD). Both characteristics of the two nanostructures were investigated. For fabrication of ZnO nanostructure UV photodetector, In-Zn inter-digitated metal electrode was evaporated on the top of the grown ZnO nanostructure to form the contact via. Compared with the common value (375 nm), both the peaks from the PL spectra of ZnO nanotip and nanorod are red-shifted (409 nm) due to the massive defects in nanotip and nanorod. In order to improve the photosensiblity, heterojunction of ZnO nanostructure/TiO2 film was prepared and were made into UV photodetector. Photoresponses of both nanotip and nanorod were improved after N2O annealing at 300oC. With the heterojunction of ZnO 1D nanostructure on TiO2 film, the photoresponses of both ZnO nanotip/TiO2 film can reach to 22.85, and the rise time and decay time are 40 and 82 seconds, respectively. On the other side, the photoresponses of both ZnO nanorod/TiO2 film can reach to 27.44, and the rise time and decay time are 22 and 133 seconds, respectively.

In Verbal Behavior, Skinner (1957) suggested that each verbal operant has independent response functions, in which acquiring one does not automatically result in the other, unless transfer between the verbal operants is directly trained. Although several researchers have shown that mands and tacts are functionally independent, more recent research has demonstrated that mands may emerge following tact training. However, this research has not clarified the influence of establishing operations on the emergence of pure mands following tact training. Therefore, the present study investigated the effects of tact training on the acquisition of impure and pure mands in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) when conditioned establishing operations (CEO) were manipulated during mand probes. Three children diagnosed with ASD were taught to tact the utensils needed to consume their preferred edibles and then were assessed on their ability to mand for those utensils during CEO absent versus CEO present pure mand probes using a multiple baseline design across participants. It was hypothesized that children would be able to mand for the missing utensils needed to consume their preferred edibles only when the food items were present (CEO present, pure mand probes), but not when they were absent (CEO absent, pure mand probes). Results showed that responses taught as tacts failed to transfer to mand responses until direct training was implemented for two of the three participants. However, once a mand response was learned, all participants exhibited the mand in the CEO present condition but not in the CEO absent condition.

The purpose of this study was to explore the formation of teacher identity among four teachers of students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and my own by examining our perspectives, influences, and experiences at different points in our careers and determining the similarities and differences that exist in our professional and educational experiences. This study focused on how teacher identity is defined within the field of education, the current literature on teacher identity formation, and the importance of understanding the formation of teacher identity among teachers of children with autism, as well as how my own teacher identity has been formed. Throughout my research, I specifically emphasized the relationships between formation of teacher identity and teachers' experiences in and out of the classroom, the transformation or evolution teachers' identities during their careers, and the characteristics and experiences that specifically distinguish teachers of children with autism from other teachers. These main themes were guided by the concept that teacher identity is not only initially formed, but is a constantly evolving and complex process that is affected by teachers' experiences, interactions, influences, and personal and professional growth. Through purposeful sampling, four teachers of children with autism in self-contained elementary classrooms within public schools were chosen to participate in this study. Data collection consisted of semi-structured interactive interviews, critical friends' sessions, and the creation of three artifacts by each participant. Artifacts for this study aided the participants in giving a more holistic view of their identities as teachers of children with autism. Artifacts consisted of teacher self-portraits with reflective prompts, buckets of their experiences with detailed explanations, and, photo journaling. Critical friends' sessions were utilized as a setting to reflect on and discuss each participant's artifacts. Both the critical friends' sessions and the creation of artifacts were based on the work on Samaras' (2011) self-study concept. During analysis, data were coded and categorized based on themes, topics, and key-words-in-context derived from a codebook created for this study. Max QDA, qualitative data analysis software, was utilized to code written data, pictures of the artifacts, and the multi-media critical friends' sessions. Codes were then merged and overall themes, similarities, and differences among participants were noted. Narrative inquiry, self-study, and autoethnography were utilized to tell the stories of each of the participant as well as to juxtapose my own story with theirs. Findings indicated that these four teachers, like myself, have had similar experiences teaching children with autism, which are in some cases vastly different than the experiences of their colleagues who do not work with this population of students. The findings further indicate that these teachers were all attracted to this specific field because of their home and educational backgrounds. Overall teacher identity was created and transformed through a combination of life events and memorable moments in their teaching careers. Implications of this study include the need for teacher learning communities for teachers of children with autism, support, and communication among veteran teachers of children with autism with the beginning teachers in the same field, and the need for teacher reflection when working in a position needing the utmost commitment and dedication. Narrative inquiry, the act of storytelling, will offer teachers, who may be struggling, the opportunity to compare their own experiences and find support through stories of teachers who have similar teacher identity formation experiences.