Language development involves the learning of multiple sets of equivalence relations. Research has shown that if certain conditional relations are directly taught for one member of a class of stimuli, then additional conditional relations often emerge for other members of that class, without direct training. There are currently very few studies which have demonstrated this research finding in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The research design used for the present experiment was a single-subject AB cross-over design replicated across five plus five children with ASD and five plus five typically developing children. The children with ASD and the typically developing children were matched on their level of vocabulary development. Participants were randomly assigned to either a teaching order Treatment A+B or a teaching order Treatment B+A. The first experimental treatment (Treatment A+B) involved teaching responses to S1 and S2 in the order Condition A followed by Condition B. The second experimental treatment (Treatment B+A) involved teaching responses to S1 and S2 in the order Condition B followed by Condition A. Condition A involved the teaching of AB and AC (hear-select) relations, and Condition B involved the teaching of BA and CA (see-say) relations. The participants in this study were taught stimulus-response relations that involved six names and numerical representations of quantities in the range 1 to 18. Tests for the emergence of symmetry and transitivity were then conducted. The relationships between the emergence of the untaught equivalence relations and teaching condition, the entering characteristics of the children, and trials to criterion were examined. The results of this study showed that five out of ten participants with ASD demonstrated the emergence of all of the untaught equivalence relations regardless of the treatment condition. The remaining five participants with ASD showed substantial variability. Of the children in the Typically Developing Group nine of the ten demonstrated emergence of all of the untaught equivalence relations. The variables that were most strongly correlated with the emergence of untaught equivalence relations were speed of acquisition of taught relations, functional academics scores, and the chronological age of the participants. The effect of communication ability, pre-academic numeracy skill level, and the experimental treatment (the teaching order conditions) were not strongly related to the emergence of untaught equivalence relations. These findings suggest that outcomes on tests for emergence may have been a function of children’s rate of development and prior learning history. The findings of the current study are best explained by Relational Frame Theory. The implications of these findings for teaching children with ASD and other developmental disabilities, and also teaching in general are discussed.

Social cues, such as eye gaze and head-turns, can orient attention automatically. Social cue processing includes three sequential stages, namely cue selection, cue following and object recognition. In a typical social cueing task, a central face is presented and then attention is directed to potential target location by an eye gaze or head turn. In these paradigms, the standard finding is that despite the non-predictive nature of the cue (i.e., the target is as likely to appear at the validly cued location as the invalidly cued location), targets appearing at the validly cued location are detected and identified faster than targets presented at the invalidly cued location. The cueing effect starts to emerge at short cue-target stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA) (e.g., 105 ms) and diminishes at the long SOA (e.g., 1005 ms). However, because only one object was presented on one side of the center gaze cue in these paradigms, the social cueing effect could be interfered or abolished by the peripheral onset effect (i.e., the automatic orienting of attention by the abrupt appearance of a single object event). The goal of this dissertation was to develop a modified social cueing task to measure the temporal dynamics of social cue processing while eliminating the potential confounds from the peripheral onset effect. In the Cued Recognition Task, the peripheral onset effect is removed by simultaneously presenting a target and a distractor object following a non-predictive head-turn cue. Results from a series of experiments using the Cued Recognition Task showed that: (a) if the distractor was not presented on the opposite side of the target, the peripheral onset effect elicited by the target onset interfered with the social cueing effect elicited by the head-turn; (b) in the cued recognition paradigm, the reflexive attention orientation effect elicited by social cues could be inhibited at 0 ms of SOA, started to emerge at 105 ms of SOA, became stable at 300 and 600 ms of SOA and sustained at 1005 ms of SOA; (c) children with ASD showed equivalent magnitude of social cueing effect as TD controls, but they were slower across all conditions despite the fact that they were as fast as TD controls in object recognition. The Cued Recognition Model developed based on all the findings in this dissertation was described in order to provide an explicit explanation of how social cues influence everyday object recognition. / Graduate / 0633 / 0620 / 0623 / xubuyun@uvic.ca

Studies show that some pupils with ASD (autism spectrum disorder) can have difficulties in understanding written texts. The present study seeks to examine whether pupils with ASD differ in their reading comprehension of a factual text and a literary text. Another aim of the study is to obtain a picture of the reading habits of high school pupils with ASD, what reading strategies they use, and how they work with texts in Swedish lessons in school. The study uses texts from PISA surveys from 2009 and 2000. The factual text Varmluftsballongen (The Hot-air Balloon) was taken from the try-out for the 2009 survey and the literary text Gåvan (The Gift) was taken from the 2000 PISA survey. To gain some idea of the pupils’ reading comprehension of the texts, the present study used the tasks accompanying the texts, with certain changes in the questions about the text on the hot-air balloon. The pupils also had to complete a questionnaire about their reading habits, how they go about understanding the texts better, and how they work with texts in Swedish lessons. The pupils were interviewed to yield a little more information about how they comprehended the two different types of text. The study was conducted at two high schools geared to pupils with ASD, including a total of twelve pupils. Four of these pupils were also interviewed. The result of the reading comprehension tests show that the majority of the pupils found it easier to answer the questions about the factual text. The pupils who read a lot and are interested in reading achieved better results in both text assignments. There was a clear association between the pupils who have difficulties concentrating and finishing a book and their results on the reading comprehension tasks, which can be explained by their functional impairment. The result of the pupils’ questionnaire showed that they use different strategies when reading factual texts and literary texts. There were also differences in how the pupils work with different texts in school, both individually and together with other pupils, depending on which type of text it is. The help that pupils receive from their teachers can be limited by the pupils’ functional impairment, but according to the study this help is significant for the pupils’ reading comprehension, especially of literary texts.

Background: There is presently a lack of consistency in research designed to measure executive functioning (EF) in autism that may be attributable to lack of homogeneity or comorbid conditions (i.e. learning disability or additional diagnosis) in test samples. Aim: A systematic review focused on a subset of EF (verbal fluency: VF) was conducted, using only studies of high-functioning individuals with autism (HFA) without an additional diagnosis or learning disability. An empirical study was conducted comparing the executive functioning profile of individuals with HFA and typically developed (TD) individuals. Method: For the systematic review, 16 studies met the specified inclusion criteria, depicting 15 semantic (category), 14 phonological (letter), and 6 switching (categories) VF tasks. In order to assess potential bias, the available VF information of the included papers was scrutinised by the author and an independent clinical practitioner. For the empirical paper, 22 HFA and 22 TD participants (mean age = 28, range = 17-73, 52% male) without a comorbid condition, learning disability or brain injury completed three subtests from the WAIS-IV (vocabulary, block design and digit span) and all subtests of the Delis–Kaplan Executive Functioning System (D-KEFS). Results: For the systematic review, a minority of semantic and phonological VF studies reported a significant difference between typically developed and HFA populations. Five of the six semantic switching studies reported a significant difference between groups. All papers included were of good or adequate quality and inter-rater reliability was high. For the empirical paper, the HFA group performed significantly poorer on the switching condition of the design fluency task, semantic conditions of the verbal fluency task and on the word context task overall. No other significant differences were observed. Summary: Although the systematic review concluded that there was insufficient evidence to support that disfluency can be attributed to autistic symptomology, the empirical study found that the HFA group performed poorer than TD in semantic VF and other subtests designed to measure generating novel ‘imaginative’ ideas, without visual cues to aid performance. The deficit on these subtests was increased when there was the added condition requiring the participant to switch between newly formed concepts. Conclusions: Although in VF, results are mixed, the empirical study demonstrates that even in a group of high-functioning individuals there are still measurable differences in EF between TD and HFA samples that may not be apparent through more general cognitive testing. Implications for using a neuropsychological profile for adults with HFA are discussed.

Little is known about the factors involved in parents’ with a child with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) decisions to visit a community outing with their family. The purpose of this research is to describe the factors that families consider when making a decision to visit a museum of science with their child with ASD. Data were analyzed based on data from a previous study in which observations and interviews were completed in order to describe the experiences of nine children and their families visiting a science museum. The findings indicated that families considered their child and his/her age and abilities, the community environment, and the features of the activities in the community space as a family when deciding whether their child was ready to visit the museum. Additionally, parents appeared to consider their available strategies for use while in the community when making readiness decisions. The information learned in this study may aid families who are trying to appraise whether their child is ready for a family community outing. Additionally, findings from this research may benefit museums interested in creating inclusive experiences for families with a child with ASD. Recommendations are provided for future research in the area of readiness for community outings for families with a child with ASD.

The three primary purposes of this study were to (1) acquire knowledge of parents’ psychological experiences obtaining a diagnosis and accessing services for their child with ASD by examining the actual situation, as lived through and experienced by the parents, (2) gain knowledge of the meaning of advocacy and empowerment from parents who are living these experiences, and (3) derive possible implications for enhancing services provided by mental health professionals, service providers, and policy-makers to parents of children with autism. I utilized a sequential transformative integrated design, drawing data in Wave II of a larger, on-going investigation examining child, family, and community variables associated with early identification and treatment of autism spectrum disorders in the Pacific Northwest. I conducted a descriptive exploratory analysis to describe all participants from Wave II with respect to measures of sociodemographic variables, parental satisfaction with services, family empowerment, and reported relationships among these variables. Next, I conducted in-depth semi-structured interviews with six participants identifying as low-income and/or ethnic minorities to explore their experiences throughout the process of obtaining a diagnosis and accessing services for their child with ASD. Interviews were recorded and transcribed. Data were analyzed using a phenomenological reduction and integrated with quantitative results. Constituent elements of the parent experiences included, but were not limited to: a desire and/or appreciation for sources of support and information regarding services; engaging in ongoing research and networking to learn about services; a need to be the expert on their child; and fear regarding availability of future services and child’s future after parents die. Constituent elements of empowerment and advocacy showed that these were conceptually and experientially related to one another, such that advocacy functioned as a behavioral manifestation of empowerment for parents in this study. Findings contribute to the literature on family experiences with the diagnostic and service utilization processes for ASD. Findings are discussed in regards to recommendations and implications for mental health professionals, service providers, and policy-makers working towards fostering more supportive and equitable diagnostic and service utilization pathways for these families.

Submitted by ELTON DE ANDRADE VIANA null (eviana@sme.prefeitura.sp.gov.br) on 2017-06-30T00:31:50Z No. of bitstreams: 1 DISSERTACAO_ELTON_VIANA.pdf: 2131297 bytes, checksum: 2b169c3ebc283be760bd844bb8263787 (MD5) / Rejected by Luiz Galeffi (luizgaleffi@gmail.com), reason: Solicitamos que realize uma nova submissão seguindo a orientação abaixo: A ficha catalográfica deve ser inserida na página subsequente à folha de rosto. A folha de aprovação deve conter os nomes que compõem a banca examinadora e a data de defesa. Corrija estas informações e realize uma nova submissão com o arquivo correto. Agradecemos a compreensão. on 2017-06-30T14:20:57Z (GMT) / Submitted by ELTON DE ANDRADE VIANA null (eviana@sme.prefeitura.sp.gov.br) on 2017-06-30T15:03:56Z No. of bitstreams: 1 DISSERTACAO.pdf: 2237099 bytes, checksum: b20c38e39fd6bf4dc41e274e4ca18f21 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Luiz Galeffi (luizgaleffi@gmail.com) on 2017-06-30T16:20:53Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 viana_ea_me_rcla.pdf: 2237099 bytes, checksum: b20c38e39fd6bf4dc41e274e4ca18f21 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-06-30T16:20:53Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 viana_ea_me_rcla.pdf: 2237099 bytes, checksum: b20c38e39fd6bf4dc41e274e4ca18f21 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-05-19 / Pensando nas alteridades observadas no sistema educacional brasileiro, este trabalho tem como objetivo aplicar e analisar o desempenho de uma aluna com Transtorno do Espectro Autista (TEA) da rede municipal de ensino da cidade de São Paulo, em situações didáticas de ensino de Matemática. Para o desenvolvimento da pesquisa, foi realizado um estudo de caso por meio de filmagens realizadas em diferentes intervenções pedagógicas efetivadas no âmbito do apoio complementar oferecido na Sala de Apoio e Acompanhamento à Inclusão (SAAI). O trabalho tem corpo textual dividido em duas partes, sendo a primeira parte um arcabouço teórico e histórico sobre o convívio com as diferenças, as dificuldades terminológicas no que se refere ao TEA, a Educação Especial e o Atendimento Educacional Especializado (AEE). Na segunda parte do texto, é apresentada a trajetória metodológica da pesquisa e a análise dos dados, onde foi obtido como resultados a proposição de que alunos com TEA em situações didáticas de aprendizagem da Matemática, apresentam diferentes elementos característicos e motivadores que devem ser conhecidos pelo Professor, já que influenciam na dinâmica escolar. / Thinking about alterities observed in the Brazilian educational system, this study aims to apply and analyze the performance of a student with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) of the municipal education network of the city of São Paulo, in didactic teaching situations of Mathematics. For the development of the research, a case study was carried out by means of filming performed in different pedagogical interventions carried out within the scope of the complementary support offered in the Sala de Apoio e Acompanhamento à Inclusão (SAAI). The work has a textual body divided into two parts, the first part being a theoretical and historical framework on living with differences, terminological difficulties with regard to ASD, Special Education and Atendimento Educacional Especializado (AEE). In the second part of the text, it is presented the methodological trajectory of the research and the data analysis, where it was obtained as a result the proposition that students with ASD in didactic situations of learning of Mathematics, present different characteristic and motivating elements that must be known by the Teacher, since they influence the school dynamics.

abstract: This thesis is a qualitative research study that focuses on siblings of children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Even though it is expected that having a child with ASD in the family will influence the whole family including siblings of the child with ASD, the sibling population is rarely included in research related to children with ASD, and there is only limited services available for them. This exploratory study (n=6) is aimed at better understanding the siblings' lives in their family settings in order to identify the siblings' unmet needs and determine how they have been influenced by the child with ASD. This study is also aimed at identifying the most appropriate support for the siblings to help them cope better. The study followed the Resiliency Model of Family Stress, Adjustment, and Adaptation and a narrative theory approach. An in-depth interview with the parents was conducted for the study, so the findings reflect the parents' perception of the siblings. All the themes emerged into two categories: life in the family setting and supports. The findings indicate that the families are striving for balance between the siblings and the children with ASD, but still tend to focus more on the children with ASD. Also, the families tend to have autonomous personal support systems. The parents tend to perceive that these personal support systems are good enough for the siblings; therefore, the parents do not feel that formal support for the siblings was necessary. As a result of the findings, recommendations are made for the organizations that work with individuals with ASD to provide more appropriate services for the families of children with ASD, including siblings. Also, recommendations are made for future studies to clarify more factors related to the siblings due to the limitation of this study; the siblings' lives were reflected vicariously via the parents. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S.W. Social Work 2013

Peer victimization is a serious national concern affecting as many as 54% of typically developing children and adolescents. Although an extensive body of literature on peer victimization in typically developing youth exists, few studies have focused on how this problem affects youth with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) who may be at a higher risk to experience peer victimization due to ASD symptomology and other common comorbid characteristics (e.g., anxiety and depressive symptoms) that may invite peer aggression. In this study, 81 school-aged youth between the ages of 9 and 17 years (M= 11.91, SD= 2.32) who were diagnosed with ASD and had a full scale intelligence quotient (IQ) equal to or greater than 70 (M= 104.10, SD= 14.24) and their parents completed questionnaires examining the frequency of peer victimization and clinical characteristics of the youth. Parents (n= 81) and their children (n= 78) reported that peer victimization occurred on average a few times in the past year, and frequency did not significantly differ across gender. Parent and child reports of victimization had a significant positive relationship with child’s report of loneliness (r(78)= .46, p< .001; r(78)= .61, p< .001, respectively), anxiety and depressive symptoms (r(78)= .22, p< 0.05; r(78)= .61, p< .001, respectively), and a significant negative relationship with social skills (r(78)= -.38, p= .001; r(78)= -.30, p< .01, respectively). The relationship between child’s and parent’s report of peer victimization and child’s anxiety/depressive symptoms (b= -.01, SE= .01, p= .55; b= .01, SE= .01, p= .34, respectively) and loneliness (b= .001, SE= .01, p= .88; b= .01, SE= .01, p= .48, respectively) did not significantly vary as a function of the overall amount of social support received. Parent and child report of peer victimization did not significantly predict parent reported parental stress above and beyond ASD symptom severity (p= .37, R2 change= .01 and p= .09, R2 change= .03, respectively). Lastly, the relationship between the child’s and parent’s report of peer victimization and parent reported social avoidance was not mediated by a fear of negative evaluation. The results indicate significant predictors of peer victimizations that may assist school staff, parents and healthcare providers identify youth with ASD who may be at risk for peer victimization and may help to shape treatment protocols by targeting the associated factors of peer victimization (e.g., anxiety and depressive symptoms, social skill deficits).

Prisoners have high rates of physical and mental morbidity and of re-offending. There have been concerns that autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) may be overrepresented and under-diagnosed in this population. The aims of this study were to examine the effectiveness of an instrument which was developed to screen for ASDs in prisons and to establish whether male Scottish prisoners differ from community controls with respect to facial emotion recognition, as measured by behavioural testing, and differ on a neural basis while performing complex social judgements, as measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). A total of 2458 prisoners (approximately 40% of the convicted prison population) were examined using the screening tool, of whom a further 127 were interviewed in depth and were assessed for facial emotion recognition ability. FMRI was used to examine haemodynamic changes in a small sample of liberated prisoners (9) during a social judgement (approachability) versus control (gender judgments) task. The screening tool had poor sensitivity (28.6%) and specificity (75.6%) and was not effective or useful in screening for ASDs in this population. Significant deficits in negative facial emotion recognition were found in the prisoner group in comparison with age- and sex-matched community controls. Region of interest analysis of fMRI data in the bilateral amygdala revealed significantly greater activation in the left amygdala in ex-prisoners versus controls during the social judgement task. The identification of these abnormalities in facial emotion recognition and social judgement are in keeping with current literature on antisocial populations. They may offer the opportunity for development of interventions aimed at reducing re-offending in the future.