The present study examined the effects of a mindfulness activity and a values power point on teacher interactions with students diagnosed with autism. Three classroom assistant teachers participated in the study. All three participants were exposed to the same experimental conditions which consisted of a baseline phase, a mindfulness phase, and a mindfulness and values phase. Positive, neutral, and negative interactions were scored during 30 minute observations directly after sessions were individually conducted. During baseline, two participants had lower interactions than in any other phase. The third participant showed variable responses. Two of the participants were able to increase positive interactions with their students in the classroom by at least 20% from baseline.

The current study examined the relationship between the relational abilities of 13 children (92.31% of which were diagnosed with autism) and their corresponding performance on a widely used language assessment tool. The relational abilities of the participants were assessed using the Prompting the Emergence of Advanced Knowledge Equivalence Pre-Assessment (PEAK-E) and language skills were assessed with the Oral and Written Language Scales- Second Edition (OWLS-II). The data indicated a strong, significant correlation between participant scores on the PEAK-E and the OWLS-II assessments (r = .888, p<.01) which is further analyzed in each of the four subsets of the OWLS-II Oral Expression (r = .861, p<.01), Listening Comprehension (r = .84, p<.01), Written Expression (r = .792, p<.01), and finally Reading Comprehension (r = .762, p<.01). Results further demonstrate the validity of the PEAK-E assessment in individuals with autism and other related disorders.

The present study evaluated the possibility of correlation between the results of the Language Processing Test (LPT3) and the Promoting the Emergence of Advanced Knowledge Relational Training System – Equivalence Module (PEAK-E). Thirteen participants with language disabilities were administered both assessments, and results indicated a significant linear correlation (r = 0.9268, p < 0.1) between the two measures. Implications for a greater understanding of human language and cognition are discussed.

The present study sought to compare the relationship between the generalization skills and performance on a standardized IQ assessment on 30 individuals with developmental or intellectual disabilities (73% had a diagnosis of autism). Participants’ generalization skills were tested using the Promoting the Emergence of Advanced Knowledge Generalization Module (PEAK-G), and IQ was assessed using either the WISC-IV Short Form assessment or the WPPSI-III Short Form assessment. The data indicated a strong, significant correlation between scores on the PEAK-G and IQ using both Raw IQ (r = .839, p > .01) and Full Scale IQ (r = .628, p > .01). Both Raw IQ and Full Scale IQ were further analyzed by comparing them each to the three subtests of the PEAK-G (Foundational Learning and Basic Social Skills, Verbal Comprehension, Memory and Advanced Social Skills and Verbal Reasoning, Problem Solving, and Advanced Mathematical Skills). The results help to provide a better understanding of how closely participants’ IQ scores correlate to their PEAK-G scores.

The present study evaluates the criterion validity and efficacy of the PEAK-E Promoting the Emergence of Advanced Knowledge Relational Training System Equivalence Module (PEAK-E) through a single case design across 3 individuals with autism. Validity, reliability, and efficacy were all addressed in the study. The study showed that the PEAK-E assessment was an effective measure for skills which were not in the individuals’ repertoires. All participants demonstrated derived responses using the PEAK-E curriculum. After training all three participants using the PEAK-E curriculum, there was an overall increase in the participants’ abilities to derive relations when reassessed again using the PEAK-E assessment.

Verbal operant training is a typical intervention for individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Response Interruption and Redirection (RIRD) is a highly effective intervention for problem behavior and various forms of stereotypy. In this study verbal operant training was combined with RIRD to see if there was a bigger impact in decreasing vocal stereotypy. The participant was a 9-year old male, and the intervention was done across settings. The results showed that combined with intraverbal training and RIRD, vocal stereotypy decreased significantly in all settings. The results also indicate this is a highly effective treatment for vocal stereotypy when the function is non-social automatic reinforcement (i.e. self-stimulation). Key words: Autism Spectrum Disorder, Intraverbal, Response Interruption and Redirection, RIRD, Verbal Operants, Vocal Stereotypy

The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the effectiveness of whether Behavioral Skills Training (BST) was effective in teaching PEAK-DT to parents of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Along with, if parent implementation of PEAK was effective in increasing the children’s PEAK scores. Three parents and their child with autism were participants in the current study using the PEAK Relational Training System-Direct Training module (PEAK-DT). The procedure first required the parents to read information on how to implement the programs found in the introduction of the PEAK-DT module. Following this step, parents observed their child’s therapy sessions conducted at an ABA clinic by student therapists. Next, the parents were instructed to implement three programs and received feedback from the child’s therapist. Implementation fidelity was collected based on the parent performance and child progress was recorded based on percent correct responding within the actual program. Each parent was able to successfully implement programs within the PEAK-DT module within their child’s therapy sessions and the children were accurately responding and two of the three children had increases in skill acquisition. The results of the present study suggest that training parents using a BST model to implement PEAK-DT was effective in teaching children with autism.

Behavior analysis has long been a field which has rooted itself in science and observable, measurable behavior, long avoiding the subject of private events such as thoughts and emotions and largely focusing applied work with individuals with disabilities. However, the prevalence of anxiety and depression among adolescents and young adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and other developmental disabilities (DD) is an issue which can hinder the development of social relationships and success in higher education. The current study used a pre- post- group design to evaluate the efficacy of implementing two components of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) with adolescents and young adults with ASD to change the function of verbal statements made about the self while discussing a negative thought. Additionally, participants wore a biofeedback wristband to measure their heart rate while discussing the thought before and after completing either an acceptance + defusion activity or a control activity. The findings of this study suggest that an acceptance + defusion activity was effective in increasing pragmatic statements and statistically significant in decreasing unworkable statements. Although the findings regarding the changes in heart rate were not statistically significant, future studies should continue to investigate ACT's effects of private events such as thoughts, feelings, self-rules, and physiological processes. With limited research within the field of behavior analysis focusing on using ACT with individuals with ASD and DD, the results of this study support a clinical utility of ACT to improve the lives of individuals with ASD.

Theory of mind (ToM) describes the ability to represent internal mental states. We propose that using ToM in practice depends upon the interplay of social, cultural and cognitive factors. The argument is divided into two parts. First, we studied whether people with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) may have deficits, which impair acquisition of the cultural knowledge necessary to use ToM in practice. The acquisition of shared beliefs, such as social norms, might indirectly rely on metarepresentational capacities. Moreover, a piecemeal processing style - Weak Central Coherence (WCC) - might translate into difficulties in the acquisition of scripts of routine events, which are normally represented as holistic, hierarchically organised knowledge structures. In four experiments we show, first, that WCC may be specific, but not universal to individuals with ASD and that WCC and ToM deficits frequently overlap. Of the ASD group with different levels of ToM abilities, only those with ToM deficits had greater impairments in drawing inferences from social norms than matched control groups. Script abnormalities ranged from a profound lack of event knowledge to more subtle qualitative peculiarities. Especially ASD with WCC and ToM deficits showed a tendency to treat optional and very specific event acts that could occur as should be occurring. The second part of the argument investigated whether power relations affect ToM usage in ordinary adults. A method to track and categorise ToM in ordinary talk was developed to study adults' accounts of real-life experiences in multi-cultural settings. Key findings were that the quality and quantity of ToM talk differed when people accounted for experiences of situated powerlessness (that is, experiences of being discriminated against) compared to when they considered episodes in which power relations were equal. Preliminary data from an experimental study suggests that adults were more inaccurate in inferring the mental states of less powerful as opposed to equally powerful others. We conclude by suggesting that an integrated social, cultural and cognitive framework of ToM in practice may contribute to our understanding of the social phenotype of ASD as well as it provides a new perspective on social phenomena such as intergroup relations.

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are defined in terms of qualitative atypicalities in social communication and interaction in the presence of restricted, repetitive patterns of behaviour, interests and activities (RRBs). Part of the main criteria for RRBs is hyper/hypo reactivity to sensory input, which appear to be particularly prevalent in the auditory domain and could result in atypical behaviours (APA, 2013). Despite the crucial role that sensory processing plays in learning, attention, cognitive and brain maturation, emotional regulation, and social communication development in humans (e.g., Ahn et al., 2004; Bundy et al., 2007), it remains unclear what precisely causes the sensory atypicalities observed in ASD or how they are associated with the development of key autistic symptomatology such as impairments in social communication (e.g., Jones et al., 2009; Leekam Prior & Uljarević, 2011). Thus, the main aim of the present thesis is to explore the nature of the auditory sensory issues and their relationship with core symptoms (i.e., RRBs and communicative ability) in ASD and the broader autism phenotype (BAP). In addition, the associations among speech perception and production, and communication were investigated. Four studies were conducted using adult samples with and without ASD. Chapter 2 reports findings indicating that the perception of intensity and frequency auditory parameters influence the severity of RRBs and that primary auditory discrimination abilities are characterised by high variability in ASD. Chapters 3 & 4 present evidence showing that the relationship between auditory intensity perception and sensation avoiding behaviours contribute to the communicative difficulties observed in adults with ASD or high levels of autistic traits. Chapter 5 provides a direct demonstration of deficits on primary syllable stress perception in ASD and its role on the speech production abnormalities and socio-communicative atypicalities in ASD. Taken together, the outcome of these investigations highlights the importance of considering the development of core autistic symptoms as an interactional multi-developmental process, which extends into the general population.