Browsing by Subject "Autistic children"
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Item A school for mainstreaming autistic children(Texas Tech University, 1994-08) Cook, William R.Not availableItem A school for mainstreaming autistic children(Texas Tech University, 1994-08) Cook, William R.Documented cases of autistic behavior have been identified as early as 1801, although the appellation "autism" was not ascribed to this condition until 1943. Leo Kanner, a child psychologist, utilized a series of symptomatic conditions to describe the characteristics of autism, most of which are still presently used.' Historically, the known cases involving these same characteristics came to light, although the diagnoses were generally for other diseases. The first documented case is that of Itard (1801) in his description of Victor, the wild boy of Aveyron, who was found wandering the forests of Aveyron, France. Itard assumed that the young boy was uneducated and untouched by societal influences, however, most of his behavioral characteristics are recognizable today as those of an autistic individual. Unfortunately, it was not until later that the full impact of these traits was recognized. This was done by Leo Karmer in the mid-twentieth century. Kanner began a full investigation into the phenomenon causing these distinctive characteristics, coining the name "early infantile autism."Item Re-imagining identity : the arts and the child with autism spectrum disorder(2010-05) Dickerson, Karen Waldrop; Reifel, Robert Stuart; Schallert, Diane L.; Worthy, Jo; Brown, Christopher; Ortiz, AlbaIn the current literature, little is written about issues of identity in relation to persons with autism. Identity can be defined within a social context, in which individuals are seen as having multiple, changing identities that are expressed in specific, though fluid, social relationships. This dissertation explored the individual arts experiences of four children with autism spectrum disorder in relation to their social identity formation. The dissertation explored three research questions: (a) What are the contextual conditions that aid and make arts experiences salient for the child with ASD? (b) What are the outcomes of arts experiences for children with ASD? and (c) How do these experiences impact the lived experience of children with ASD? Data were collected over four months, beginning in March of 2009 and continued through June, in a private school for children with learning differences in southeastern, Texas. Data included interviews with students, parents and teachers and classroom observations. Qualitative research methodology, specifically, grounded theory was used to analyze the data. Findings were that arts experiences for children with autism spectrum disorder engendered an identity transformation for the participants. The central phenomenon of the study was termed: Re-imagining of the identity of the child with autism spectrum disorder. Through shared discourse of the classroom teachers, arts teachers, and parents, the children participants became identified as “art kids” and “drama kids” within the school community. Re-imagining consisted of re-envisioning the child’s future, re-defining the child by his or her talents versus his or her deficits, and re-interpreting the child’s actions and behaviors.Item Self-monitoring to improve on-task behavior of a student with high functioning autism(Texas Tech University, 1997-12) Hyatt-Foley, Deborah AnnThe purpose of this study was to increase the on-task behavior of a 12 year old boy with high functioning autism. This study explored the effects of self-monitoring and selfgraphing on improving the subject's on-task behavior during large group Daily Oral Language, vocabulary and reading instruction. A changing criterion design was implemented over a period of 20 days. Generalization probes were conducted during social studies/health instruction. Results indicated that the subject's on-task behavior increased significantly over time, suggesting that self-monitoring and self-graphing could be an effective intervention for students with high functioning autism.Item The signing of deaf children with autism : lexical phonology and perspective-taking in the visual-spatial modality(2010-05) Shield, Aaron Michael; Meier, Richard P.; Cohen, Leslie B.; Beaver, David; Neal-Beevers, A. Rebecca; Quinto-Pozos, DavidThis dissertation represents the first systematic study of the sign language of deaf children with autism. The signing of such children is of particular interest because of the unique ways that some of the known impairments of autism are likely to interact with sign language. In particular, the visual-spatial modality of sign requires signers to understand the visual perspectives of others, a skill which may require theory of mind, which is thought to be delayed in autism (Baron-Cohen et al., 1985). It is hypothesized that an impairment in visual perspective-taking could lead to phonological errors in American Sign Language (ASL), specifically in the parameters of palm orientation, movement, and location. Twenty-five deaf children and adolescents with autism (10 deaf-of-deaf and 15 deaf-of-hearing) between the ages of 4;7 and 20;3 as well as a control group of 13 typically-developing deaf-of-deaf children between the ages of 2;7 and 6;9 were observed in a series of studies, including naturalistic observation, lexical elicitation, fingerspelling, imitation of nonsense gestures, two visual perspective-taking tasks, and a novel sign learning task. The imitation task was also performed on a control group of 24 hearing, non-signing college students. Finally, four deaf mothers of deaf autistic children were interviewed about their children’s signing. Results showed that young deaf-of-deaf autistic children under the age of 10 are prone to making phonological errors involving the palm orientation parameter, substituting an inward palm for an outward palm and vice versa. There is very little evidence that such errors occur in the typical acquisition of ASL or any other sign language. These results indicate that deaf children with autism are impaired from an early age in a cognitive mechanism involved in the acquisition of sign language phonology, though it remains unclear which mechanism(s) might be responsible. This research demonstrates the importance of sign language research for a more complete understanding of autism, as well as the need for research into atypical populations for a better understanding of sign language linguistics.