extended essay on autism

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Jackie Schuld Art Therapy Blog

Feb 17, 2023

The Great List of Autistic Essays

I’m a late-identified autistic who loves writing about autism. How much do I love it? I’ve written over 150 essays on it in the past six months alone.

How do I think of so many autistic topics to write about? I’m an art therapist who specializes in late-identified autistic adults. That means I not only have my personal experience to draw from, but also the hundreds of hours spent listening to my clients.

I share most of my essays here on Medium, which means it has now become quite the library. In an effort to make my essays more accessible to those wanting clear, relatable information about late-identified autism in adults, I’ve sorted my essays into topics below. While I wish I could provide a link to each of them for you… I’ve got to prioritize my time and energy. So if a specific essay interests you, just pop it into the search and it’ll come up

Autism in a Neurotypical World

What Would a World Designed by Autistic People Be Like

The Harm in "They're a Little Autistic"

Autism Does Not Directly Cause Socializing Problems

Please Trust My Lived Autistic Experience

Can Someone Please Create a Neurodivergent Intentional Living Community

What if I Accept that Most Neurotypicals Won't Like Me

How Neuro-Bias Shows Up in Professional Testing

Your Autistic Experience Sounds Just LIke my Neurotypical One

Neurotypical Words that Don't Work for Autistics: Overachiever

But Neurotypicals Experience That, Too!

Neurotypical Norms That Don’t Work for Autistics: Hustle Goals

The Fear of Being a Hypocritical Autistic

Neurodiversity: Us vs Them?

How to Meet an Autistic Adult Exactly Where They're At

Autism Characteristics

The Autistic Mind Loves to Take Detours

4 Reasons Why Autism Symptoms Lists are Confusing

My Autistic Brain: Sunshine and Detours

The Joys of Being Autistic: Part 1

Stop Saying Autistic People Can't Empathize

Redefining Fun for Autistic Adults

9 Reasons Why Autism Looks So Similar to CPTSD

We Need More Depictions of the Interior Experience of Autism

Clarity is What my Autistic Mind Craves

How Trauma and Autism Can be a Confusing Mix to Decipher

Why am I like This? Understanding the Autistic Brain

My Autistic Mind Does What it Wants

The Dissociated Autistic Performance State

The Joys of Being Autistic: Increased Creativity and Innovation

My Autistic Memory Is Not the Same as Others

The Firehouse Dilemma: Autism and Infodumping

The Variability of the Autistic Sensory System

5 Reasons Autistics are Especially Hard on Themselves

The Shame That Often Accompanies Autism

Knowing You’re Different as an Autistic Adult

3 Reasons Autism is Worse After You Learn You're Autistic

Disability and Internalized Ableism

I Had to Dismantle My Fear of Autistic People

Is Autism a Disability?

I’m Ok With Saying I have a Disability, Right?

Dog Training

The Difficulties of Adjusting to a New Dog When You're Autistic

Tips for Adjusting to a New Dog When You're Autistic

5 Tips to Integrate a Dog into Your Autistic Life

Defining and Explaining Autism

What I Wish Others Knew About Autism

Let’s Drop the “Disorder” From Autism Spectrum Disorder

How Low and High Autism Labels are Misleading

We Need All the Autism Theories and Models

Autism Can Be a Murky Thing To Understand

How I Explain Autism to Someone Unfamiliar With It

What is Late Identified Autism

Autistic Statistics are Not Accurate for Late-Identified Autistics

I'm Here for the Autistic Awakening

How It Helps to Know You’re Autistic

Why It Matters to Know You're Neurodivergent

What is Neurodiversity and Why Does it Matter

How Neurodivergent Acceptance Can Improve Our Lived Experiences

How Unidentified Autistics are Taught to Socially Camouflage and Mask

Is There a World Where I can Be Unmasked?

The False Dichotomy of Masked and Unmasked Autism

6 Reasons Why UnMasking Is Harder Than it Sounds

What if You have to Mask Everywhere?

My Personal Experience as an Autistic

Hating Cooking as an Autistic Adult

I Make Giant Lists About Autism for Fun

The Challenges of Writing Publically About Autism

The Risk of Sharing my Autistic Passions with Others

I'm Reclaiming Weird for My Autistic Self

I Expand and Then I Contract

I Stopped Seeing Myself As Broken When I learned I was Autistic

Respecting my Limits as an Autistic Business Owner

I Need to Lessen the Pressure on my Autistic Self

My Autistic Brain Doesn’t Want to Watch TV Right Now

Embracing Who I am as an Autistic Adult

I Used to be a Very Judgemental When I Didn’t Know I was Autistic

A Letter from An Autistic Adult to Trust

Don’t Get So Upset: A Line that Doesn’t Work for This Autist

Why This Autistic Writer Didn't Respond to Your Comment

Relationships

Is Dating Worth it as an Autistic Adult?

Is it Possible to be Happily Partnered as an Autistic Adult?

Not Liking People as an Autistic Adult

Self-Identification

So You Think You Might Be Autistic

Dearly Newly Identified Autistic Person

Am I Actually Autistic?

Dearest Smart, Weird, and Caring Autistic

I Am Deeply Unsure About Autism

How to Self Identify Autism as an Adult

When the Past Makes Sense after a Late-Identification of Autism

Where to Start When You First Learn You’re Autistic

6 Strategies to Harness the Hyperfocus Power of an Autistic Mind

Leave the Gremlin In the Cave: Self-Isolation as a Necessary Autistic Tool

No Plans Days as an Autistic Tool

Making Accommodations for Myself as an Autistic Adult

How Many Accommodations Can We Ask for as Autistic Adults?

Using Art to Help Your Autistic Mind

Dissociation as an Autistic Tool

The Power of the Home Environment for Autistics

Is It Ok to Honor My Autistic Needs?

Recognizing When It's Not Time to Make Decisions as an Autistic

Therapy for Autistics

Dearest Autistic Client of Mine

8 Ways Therapy Can Help With Late Identified Autism

Gaslighting the Autistic Experience

Dearest Therapist Who Knows Barely Anything About Autism

I'm an Autistic Therapist: Sometimes It's Easier Than Everyday Life

Does Your Therapist Know Enough About Autism to Help You?

Questions to Ask a Potential Therapist When You're Autistic

How I Work with Newly Identified Autistic People

What to Ask When You're Seeking Therapy for Late-Identified Autism

12 Ways Therapy Can Enhance Life for Late Identified Autistic Adults

Therapy is Not for Fixing Autism

The Harm I Caused When I Didn't Know about Autism

A Newly Identified Autistic Therapist Working with Newly Identified Autistics

Common Therapy Advice That is Counterproductive for Autistics

A Therapist Told Me Treating Autism is Like Treating Depression

Who Can Diagnose Autism in Adults?

Autistic Adults Deserve Better from the Mental Health Field

Undiagnosed Autism

The Correlation Between Intelligence and Undiagnosed Autism

10 Consequences of a Life with Unidentified Autism

The Gap Between “Diagnosable Autism” and a Lifetime of Unidentified Autism

Autism Diagnosis Criteria are Limiting for Men Too

No Autistic Should Receive a Diagnosis Letter Like Mine

Identifying Autism in Undiagnosed Women Abstract

How I Identify Autism in Undiagnosed Women

Autistic Stereotypes Block People From Knowing They're Autistic

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165 Autism Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

Struggle with writing a research paper topics on autism? We’ve got your back covered! Below, you will find a list of 147 topics about autism as well as autism research paper examples!

🏆 Best Research Autism Topics & Essay Examples

👍 good autism essay topics, 💡 psychology research autism topics to write about, ⭐ simple & easy autism essay titles, ❓ research questions about autism.

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) Autism is a serious disorder that has the potential to disrupt the success of people living with it. This is to mean that the theory of causation regarding autism is not complete as yet.
Autism Spectrum Disorder in a Child At the moment, M.is more verbal with his parents and siblings and reacts adequately to them, especially in repeated day-to-day situations.
“Let Me Hear Your Voice: A Family’s Triumph Over Autism” by Catherine Maurice The book was published in 1994, and it was a success as parents of autistic children were waiting for someone to prove that autism was not an incurable disorder.
Analysis of Children Autism in “The Black Balloon” It is imperative to note that Charlie’s emotions are not regulated and as such, manifest in immature behaviors such as flapping of his hands.
How Christopher’s Autism Affect His Life In spite of the fact that the issue of autism is not clearly explained in the story, the condition of the narrator is referred to as high-functioning autism or Aspersers Syndrome on the cover of […]
Social Work Methods to Treat the Child Who Is Suffering From Autism This is a clear indicator that alcohol intake by the family is costing the members and it is an issue that needs to be looked into.
Inclusion Curriculum for Children With Autism In the given paper, the issue of children autism, the developmental issues that autism triggers and the educational prospects for children with autism are going to be considered.
Autism. Sensory Integration. Tactile Desensitization The poor development that is recorded at the early stages in life is likely to affect the development of different skills by the individuals even in the adult stages The signs that are associated with […]
Reducing Off-Task Behaviors Using a Token Economy System in Children With Autism Token economy is a strategy of positive reinforcement that can be provided to children in the form of tokens for completing the assigned tasks.
Exploring Autism in the Drama Film Rain Man Charlie Babbitt, the brother to Raymond, is the actor who portrays Raymond’s autism on the way to Los Angeles to secure his fair share in the Babbitt’s $3 million fortunes in form of inheritance.
Autism Spectrum Disorders and Family Impact One of the greatest fears of a parent with such a child is the fact that such a child would be taken care of until the advanced stages of their lives.
Language Development Problems in Children: An Indicative Characteristic of Autism This is because it is a time when it is expected that a majority of the kids should be able to talk.
Applied Behavior Analysis and Autism The primary subject of this study is applied behavior analysis while the secondary subject is applied behavior analysis and its effects on autism in children.
Autism Spectrum Disorder However, the reality is that the number of children with autism and having high intelligence is insignificant. It is apparent that, in autism, a disorder is found in the structure of the brain.
Impact of Autism Disorder on Adolescents This essay discusses the impact of autism disorder on adolescents in the community and a nursing intervention that can be used to assist adolescents in becoming prominent society members.
Progression of Reading Ability in a Child Diagnosed With Autism The battery of assessments and interviews with parents on the participant’s socialization and early reading ability indicates the study applied the Psychometric and Social Contextual approaches.
Analysis of Behavior of Preschool Age Child With Autism The child’s behavior in the video differs from that of a mentally healthy child, and these differences lie in the child’s other emotional state and degree of interest in talking to people.
Autism and Disability Advocacy People with autism can contribute to the diversity of disability culture by expanding understanding of what disability is and how it can be accepted.
Autism Spectrum Disorder Diagnosis According to DSM-5, to fit the diagnostic criteria for ASD, a child must have evident deficits in three major areas of social communication as well as 2 out of the 4 restricted or repetitive behaviors.
Thinking in Pictures: Autism and Sensory Problems The chapter “The Squeeze Machine: Sensory Problems in Autism” in Grandin’s Thinking in Pictures presents a series of life perspectives of various individuals, including her own, regarding the sensory problems they experienced. They postulated that […]
Therapeutic Programs for Children With Autism in K-12 Institutions In the paper, the gaps in the research of effective treatments for children with ASD are explored, after which the efficacy of a multi-system aquatic therapy and standardized equine-assisted therapy program is argued.
Societal Issue Research Project: Autism Spectrum Disorder The first factor is the significant risk that the genetics of siblings who had ASD diagnosis will increase the chance of the disorder.
Child-Centered Play Therapy and Autism The purpose of the discussed research was to investigate the effects of CCPT on the sample of children with autism, establishing and describing the connection between CCPT and social and emotional growth.
Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder: The Training Program for Caregivers The latter means that many caregivers take care of children with ASD, hence the importance of equipping them with the necessary skills for effective and smooth parenting and coping with various difficulties.
Autism Spectrum Disorder’s Impact on Child’s Learning In regards to the public-school setting, standardized testing demands youngsters to grasp and react to spoken as well as written communication at an anticipated pace and level.
Laboratory Diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorders The purpose of my study is to discover which of these methods is more accurate, with the reason being the importance of early diagnosis of ASD, which leads to better treatment outcomes.
Autism and Related Cognitive Concepts It has been suggested that children with autism show a general deficit of cognitive skills in multilevel planning and in the regulation of behavior.
Bullying and Autism Spectrum Disorder In fact, bullying as a social phenomenon can be characterized as a social and interaction issue; therefore, it is possible to analyze the connection between autism and acts of bullying and inappropriate behavior.
Aspects of Autism Spectrum Disorder Overall, for children with autism spectrum disorder, it is quite complicated to learn the norms within society around them, as they are having difficulties comprehending other people’s emotions and behavior.
Face Emotion Recognition in Autism Phenotype One critical aspect of social communication is the capability to apprehend the emotions and intentions of another person. In conclusion, Autism Spectrum Disorder makes the interpretation of facial expressions difficult.
How Does Having a Child With Autism Affects Parents’ Lifestyle? The creation of a system of psychological, pedagogical and social support can reduce the risk of a complete family life dedication to a child with autism.
Misrepresentation of Autism in the ‘Music’ Film While the film was not centered on the topic of autism as its message, the stereotype-heavy portrayal and a lack of research make it a harmful piece of media.
Autism Spectrum Disorder Prevalence and Impact in Society It has therefore been impossible to determine the level of increase in autism cases that is as a result of improved diagnostic measures and that which can be attributed to the real increase in autism […]
Autism Spectrum Disorder: Diagnosis, Impact, Treatment The main diagnostic element for ASD is the evidence of difficulties, either in the present or past, which are different across the age groups.
Autism and Vaccination Refusal Management Among Somalian Parents Somalian parents in their community in Minnesota refuse from their children being vaccinated, as they believe that vaccination causes autism.
Everyone Has the Power to Effect Positive Change Within the Autism Community This paper presents what is autism, how every one reacts to the problem, what is the difference between the rich and the poor in their response towards the problem.”Autism is one of five developmental disorders […]
Autism Spectrum Disorder: Key Points The requirement to meet these needs is supported by the fact that the rate of students with ASD is high: according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, more than 83 per cent of […]
“Theoretical Aspects of Autism” by Helen Ratajczak On the whole, it is possible to say that the standards set by Austin Hill cannot be always met, in part because the physiological aspects of this disease have not been fully investigated.
Dr. Temple Grandin’s Argument on Visual Thinking and Autism A more in-depth analysis of visual activities can reveal the all imagery can be mentally processed and modified by children so that images are rotated and analyzed to make the brain map expand.
Intellectual Disability: Autism In their adulthood, and because of the communication issues that most individuals with autism tend to have, they will naturally have difficulty in finding and keeping jobs.
Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy for Children With Autism On the positive side, it fastens the production of different types of reactive oxygen used in the body. It is arguable that the size of the samples used in the study was small.
Occupational Therapy for Children With Autism The main reason for the appearance of autism is the disturbance of the development of the patients brain which results in the appearance of various symptoms.
The Mitochondria and Autism – Results and Main Function The results are important in health because children with autism were more probable to have dysfunctions and abnormalities of the mitochondria such as over replication and deletion of mitochondrial DNA compared to those without the […]
Autism Etiology, Symptoms, Beliefs, and Management To date, debate on the cause or etiology of autism still remains divided, with extant literature demonstrating that “although many hypotheses have been proposed, a singular or specific combination of causes has yet to be […]
Quantitative Assessment of Neuromotor Function in Adolescents With High Functioning Autism: Critique The study authors did not give the benefits and/or risks associated with the study participation. The authors indicated that the ZNA was appropriate for collecting the data because it could measure the 11 parameters of […]
Critical Appraisal on the Impact of Autism Spectrum Disorders on the Family: A Qualitative Study of Mothers’ Perspectives The study researchers established the significance of the study by outlining the social and financial implications of taking care of children with ASD.
Autism: External Forces, Causes and Treatment The increasing prevalence of Autism in the United States and across the world is attracting great attention from the healthcare sector to design critical programs tailored to stem the disorder in terms of prevention, treatment, […]
The Importance of Services for Children With Autism The plea of the majority of Americans for the reverse of healthcare budget allocation is well because it is wrong to interfere with services offered to children with autism. With childcare initiative in place, the […]
Autism: General Information and Treatment She argues that the treatment of autism is through scientific proven medication that aids in controlling aggressive behaviors and that Trisperidone is the commonly used antipsychotic.
The Issue of Autism: Task-Group Project The role of B.N.in the meeting can be seen as a summarizer, providing a summary of the minutes of the previous meeting.
Concepts of Autism and Williams Syndrome The disorder manifests itself in the early years of a child’s life, with long-lasting effects that are not curable but controllable and easy to deal with on condition that, the concerned parties take the necessary […]
Autism Programs to Enhance Students’ Outcomes In addition to social and behavioral challenges, ASD typically hinders a learner’s ability to gain and process the necessary academic information.
Autism Program’s Impact Across Contexts In other words, a detailed overview of the issues that administrators face when designing the program and which the teachers have to deal with when addressing the needs of children with autism must be carried […]
Autism: Teaching Plan for Taking All the Features Into Account For the first child, caregiver training was done at child’s bedroom, and for the second child it was done at living room, and for the third child with severe mental retardation it was carried out […]
Education Considerations for Students With Autism Two articles under consideration consider the opposite views regarding the education of students with autism; on the basis of the information obtained from these articles, it can be stated that none of the perspectives is […]
Autism Spectrum Disorders: Diagnostic Procedure In general, this journal is very interesting and it is an important contribution to the development of appropriate screening and identification procedures for children with ASD.
Developmental Psychology: Autism and Vaccination Vaccination of infants is widely used today as the pattern of endemic diseases can be explained in terms of interplay of social, physical and biological factors in an area that is conducive to a continuous […]
Proposal for the Organization of the Concert in Autism Support The paper will be focused on the organizational aspects of the autism support concert and the people to be invited to this meeting attendance.
The Development of Autism Analysis The paper will disclose the interviews of this famous and significant person whom managed to give all her efforts to the development of autism charitable programs and contribute to autism support all over the world. […]
Autism and Immunization: Vaccines and the Changing Epidemiology The interest and attention invoked by this paper were largely due to the fact that it appeared to provide a biological means through which MMR vaccine resulted in autism.
Do Vaccinations Cause Autism in Children? Autism is defined by the Autism Society of America as ” a complex developmental disability that typically appears during the first 3 years of life and is the result of a neurological disorder that affects […]
Autism. Child and Family Assessment The other common disorder associated with autism is that of mutism whereby it also lies under the category of speech disorder and in many cases it is difficult to be diagnosed and at the same […]
Autism and False Belief in Psychology The theories are found to be covering the deficits of an individuals’ mind and factors relating to autism, research further indicates that a child’s behavior may be influenced by the executive functions this, therefore, brings […]
Autism Spectrum Disorder and Interventions However, the negative side of it is that such an intervention is limited to those patients who are verbal and have limited vocabulary.
Autism: Methods of Diagnosing and Treatment Analysis A malfunction in the neural circuitry of the brain of those with autism is the likely cause of their perceptions regarding social interaction and lack of adequate cognitive abilities.
Autism: Symptoms, Forms, Diagnostic Instruments Autism is basically a developmental disorder of the human brain that its first symptoms are initially manifested in infancy and it follows a steady cause without relapse.
Mercury, Vaccines and Autism: One Controversy, Three Histories In due course of time, the emergence of organomercurials as effective agents in combating bacterial contamination of vaccines slowly resulted in the research on and inclusion of thimerosal, a white crystalline powder in the form […]
Autism Spectrum Disorder Features in Children One of the causes for the appearance of these issues is an inborn disability that might presuppose the need for specific methods to educate a child and guarantee a chance for integration with society.
Autism Occurrence by Measles Vaccine Status The organization of information in the text follows a logical format by introducing the background for the vaccine, incorporating the issue of ASD connection, and leading up to the primary research question.
Parental Report of Vaccine Receipt in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder In the introduction, which is the first section, the study’s research problems and their significance to nursing are stated. The discussion section covers how the authors relate the findings to the research objective and the […]
Teenagers With Autism Disorder Autism is seen as a spectrum disorder since its severity and symptoms vary greatly among affected individuals – from mild and occasional to persistent and interfering with all aspects of life.
Impact of Autism Spectrum Disorders on Life However, between the ages of two and three, his lack of verbal activity and inability to “echo” simple sounds and syllables were found to be very concerning by the family.
Risperidone in Children With Autism: ANOVA Article The variables used in the article are sufficient for the investigation, and they would not be changed. The study authors assume that risperidone and placebo treatments would have significant variations in the mental abilities of […]
Autism Should Not Be Viewed as a Disability A good example is that the treatment of autism as a mental disorder makes it possible for pharmaceutical companies and clinics to invent new health systems or procedures that will meet the needs of the […]
Autism Spectrum and Features of Health Conditions Nevertheless, the manifestations of the autism spectrum also depend on the intellectual abilities of the person and his or her age.
Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder For instance, the researchers have reviewed the findings by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and the Government Accountability Office to present the statistics on children with ASD and the increase in the number […]
Autism: Main Symptoms and Research Major symptoms of the disorder are repetitive behavior, abnormal communication development, and motor skills development. Major symptoms of autism are repetitive behavior, abnormal motor skills, and communication development.
Autist Student’s Behavior and Remedial Plan In the process of reading, I would pay attention to the student’s concentration and ability to integrate what she was reading. She also took long in doing this and did not want to stop the […]
Autism Treatment, Its Methods and Results It was appropriate to focus on the use of the DSE intervention and examine if addressed most of the challenges facing many ASD patients.
The Physiological Impact of Autism on Children and Parents It is possible to speak about the physiological impact of ASD on children and their parents in the UK, and the detailed examination of this issue is required. To review the literature on possible barriers […]
Autism Spectrum Disorder: Programs Effectiveness The purpose of this PE, therefore, is to evaluate and analyze the efficiency of the programs implemented by the Day Support Services.
Autism: Characteristics, Prevalence and Interventions The symptoms of autism are noticeable in the early years of childhood. Occupational therapy is one of the non-educational interventions used to assist kids with autism.
Students With Autism Spectrum Disorders The main goal of this paper is to present a review of relevant literature addressing the issue of helping college students with ASD prepare for workforce readiness and job placement.
Autism Treatment Network in the PEACE Program In order to use these resources in PEACE, it is necessary to establish a budget that will cover expenditures on training courses for specialists involved in the program, educational materials, seminars, and individual counseling.
Association Between Vaccination and Autism The study examined whether there is a link between the toxic effects of exposure to thimerosal-containing vaccines and the risk of developing ASD.
Olfaction and Autism Spectrum Disorder Relationship These findings reveal that the sniff test can reveal both the presence and severity of ASD in young children. The link between ASD and olfaction can be used in diagnosing young children with autism.
Vaccination Contrubution to Autism Development This anxiety has led to a civic health dispute about the civil liberties of parents to decide whether to vaccinate their children, along with the state regulation on vaccinations to guard the wellbeing of its […]
Abu Dhabi Autism Center The Abu Dhabi Autism Center has to operate within the laws and regulations of the Zayed Higher Organization for Humanitarian Care and Special Needs.
Applied Behavior Analysis Treatment for Autism It is the most commonly applied autism treatment remedy in the United States and several other countries in the world and the major method that schools and therapists embrace and use.
Involving Adults With Autism Plus Learning Disability Since the method is interviewing, a particular aspect of the study that should be addressed with attention is the researchers’ perspective.
Inclusive Education: Child With Autism and Spina Bifida It is worth mentioning that Ted’s mother is willing to cooperate with teachers, and her participation can be of great assistance to the teacher.
Bright Not Broken: Gifted Kids, ADHD, and Autism It is possible to state that the book provides rather a high-quality review of the issues about the identification, education, and upbringing of the 2e children.
Case Law and Case Study of a Student With Autism On reviewing the evaluation results in the presence of the student’s mother, an agreement was reached on the general education placement for the student.
Children With Autism’ Communication in Saudi Arabia Parents of children with autism in Saudi Arabia have complained that the government has neglected the needs of autistic children by failing to finance their education and research to detect the effectiveness of the digital […]
Autism Spectrum Disorders: Testing and Measurement It will begin with the rationale that explain why the issues are critical, followed by the reasons for unavailability of the solutions to the issues and the consequences of the issues.
Autism Spectrum Disorders and Educational Interventions From this point, this paper aims to discuss the definition of Autism Spectrum Disorders, examine the etiology and incidence of the disorder, focus on the prevalence of autism, and analyze the effectiveness of the DTT […]
Autism Expressed: Branding Strategy and Marketing The promise that the brand offers to the public should be in line with the desires of the clients. This firm will need to prepare this branding strategy in a way that will meet its […]
Vaccines and Autism: Separating Facts From Fiction The advocacy groups say that thimerosal, a preservative used in vaccines, is toxic to the central nervous system and responsible for an alarming rise in rates of autism among children in the United States and […]
Self-Injury in Autism: Applied Behavior Analysis Applied behavior analysis incorporates the utilization of direct perception, estimation, and useful investigation of the relations in the middle of the environment and conduct.
Lesson for Learners With Autism: Reflection Observation The essay identifies the instructional methods used by the teacher during the exercise. The teacher also guided the learners to solve the mathematical problems using different visual objects.
Autism Spectrum Disorder Concept Besides, Temple often explores her own experiences and attempts to understand the feelings of others that are unavailable to her by visualizing herself as other creatures people and animals.
Dubai Autism Center’ Quality Management TQM employs strategies and effective communication within the organization to incorporate the quality principles into the culture and activities of the organization to ensure that all the activities are geared towards satisfying the customers.
Vaccination and Autism in Children The problem with this case is that while it may be true that the cause for the development of autism in children have yet to be fully determined, the fact remains that there have been […]
Video Modeling for Individuals With Autism The video model will be developed according to the needs of autistic children, with the focus on the role of visual and auditory stimuli in the teaching process.
The Effects of Vaccines on Autism From their study, the findings demonstrate that the presence of thimerosal is one of the causes of the disorder. It is imperative to state that they have used many studies that have indicated that there […]
Vaccination as a Cause Autism This paper borrows on the arguments of Monica Prasad and Washington and Haydn when they argue that the belief about vaccinations as a primary cause of autism stems from emotional, psychological, and behavioral barriers, as […]
Youth With Autism Disorder: Education and Employment This includes the communication patterns of the teenager, the extent of social relations and the unusual behavioral characteristics of the teenager in the environment.
Autism Children Education Inclusion Policy in Private Schools: Compulsory Enrollment Policy 2011 The following are the main areas will be addressed by the policy: Prohibited Private schools will be prohibited from ignoring the needs of children suffering from autism; they will be compelled by the act to […]
Autism: Pathogenesis and Intervention Similarly, a person with autism has to be trained on the process of communicating normally and forming a relationship with objects, events and people in their lives.
The Real Causes of Autism However, the main problem is that this association or correlation does not imply that autism is triggered by a vaccine. This is the main argument that can be put forward.
Autism Effect on Children It is crucial to understand the behavior of children with autism in the school set up in order to understand how autism affects children and their social interactions. It is up to the teacher to […]
Autism and Its Effects on Social Interaction The article “Social Impairment in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder” identifies the major challenges facing many people with autism. The authors wanted to examine the social problems and difficulties encountered by individuals with Autism Spectrum […]
Older Dads More Likely to Have Kids With Autism The author highlights autism as one of the main outcomes of late fatherhood following the release of the results of a study involving the counting of the mutations corresponding to a father’s age at the […]
Evidenced-Based Practice: Autism Management in Children Autism largely is connected to communication abilities of a child, a situation that later results into the child experiencing disability problems in effectively encoding and decoding communicative messages.
Miami Dance Project for Autistic Children For me, what the Miami dance project represents is in line with what is known as the concept of confidence building wherein through the development of certain talents children with autism will begin to have […]
Program Models in Autism The DTT technique has been designed in such a way as to target the individual behavior of an autistic child using the available curriculum.
Autism Spectrum Disorder in Relation to Education Attending to students having ASD in the regular classrooms requires specialized teachers and supplementary staff in order to aid in the realization of the needs of the students having ASD.
Critical Analysis of Published Articles: Autism It was therefore the goal of the research to find out if the negative attitude of people towards autistic children can be altered to the benefit of the parents.
Autism in Saudi Arabia This support may come in the form of modification of the curriculum to cater for the special needs of the autistic children.
Analysis of Autism Disorder This disorder affects the brain of the child during growth so that it does not develop in the right way thus affecting the social and communication skills of the child. This is especially to the […]
One-To-One Programs: Supporting Autistic Children The purpose of conducting this essay will be to examine the educational intervention of one-to-one support programs during normal school times within a mainstream classroom and also to discuss the challenges faced by teachers and […]
Psychological Disorders and Their Treatment: An Overview of the Recent Progress and the Current Challenges in Treating Autism in Children In the given paper, the issue of psychological disorders is being addressed in reference to the ideas expressed in Chapter 11 “Psychological Disorders” in Carole Wade and Carol Tavris’s Invitation to Psychology.
Early Intervention for Young Adults With Autism This is due to unavailability of information on children development stages and the importance of early detection and intervention in the case of autism.
Different Behaviors in Children With Autism The purpose is to find out whether the co morbidity changes with the environment, and assess the influence that the environment has on the behavior of an autistic child.
Diagnosis and Treatment for Autism Disorder Children with autism are therefore able to reason and even interpret the feelings of other people but the challenge is to communicate the response to other people.
Autism: Qualitative Research Design Golafshani continues to argue that the use of the term “dependability” in qualitative studies is a close match to the idea of “reliability” in quantitative research.
Treatment of Autism With the Use of the Picture Exchange Communication System There are lots of types of this communication system that may be used with children, who have autism, and one of them is the Picture Exchange Communication System that is characterized by a proper picture […]
Vaccines and Autism: A Critical Analysis of Thimerosal in Relation to Measles, Mumps, and Rubella The safety and efficacy of vaccines has been the subject of many studies in the medical field. The disorder was observed in one participant from each of the cohorts in the experiment.
How to Recognize and Teach Students With Autism If these groups of students have to be given directions that are more than three steps, the directions have to be written down due to their inability to remember sequences.
Autism and Visual Thought Suprisingly the quality of visual thinking according to Bogdashina is dependent on other factors like time and the state the autistic person is in.
Autism and Educational Process Owing to these adverse effects that can stem from autism and the shear prevalence of the condition in the country’s population, a lot of research effort has been dedicated to the early diagnosis and treatment […]
Do Vaccines Cause Autism? Thimerosal is alleged to increase the exposure of mercury in the vaccine to a substantiated high amount. In fact, the amount of antigens between children with autism and without is the same irrespective of the […]
The Disease of Autism Origin The disorder is one of the new diagnoses of the autism. Other effects of the disorder are constipation and growth failures that may be a problem to the lives of the individual.
Autism Spectrum Disorder in Children and Its Impact on the Family Manning, Wainwright and Bennet argue that children with autism are faced with a big challenge because of the nature of the symptoms the disorder.
Autism’s Teaching Tips for Children and Adults The present description is concerned with the role of teacher in the better management of Autism in children. Further, assessment of the interactive and developmental skills is on of the important component in the teacher […]
What Are Autism Spectrum Disorders?
How Does Autism Affect the Person With It and Those Around Them?
What Are the Barriers of Learning for a Learner With Autism/Aspergers in Performing Arts?
Does Gluten Effect Children With Autism?
What Are the Causes of Autism?
How Does Autism Affect a Child’s Educational Performance?
What Can Autism Look Like and Things You Can Do to Spot It?
Can Children With Autism Develop a Theory of Mind?
Which Interventions Reduce Anxiety in Autistic People?
What Influence Has the Development of Autism Had on a Diagnosed Individual?
How Does Autism Affect the Development of a Child?
Are Huddles the Missing Piece of the Puzzle in Implementing Clinical Innovation for the Eating Disorder and Autism Comorbidity?
How Does Autism Start?
Can Mouse Imaging Studies Bring Order to Autism Connectivity Chaos?
How Does ‘Fake News’ Affect Autism Policy?
Are There Any Relationships Between Latent Toxoplasma Gondii Infection, Testosterone Elevation, and Risk of Autism Spectrum Disorder?
How Do People With Autism Experience the World?
Can Robotic Systems Promote Self-Disclosure in Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorder?
How Did the Media Perpetuate the Autism-Vaccine Scare?
Are There Cultural Differences in Parental Interest in Early Diagnosis and Genetic Risk Assessment for Autism Spectrum Disorder?
How Can the Therapist Help Autism Children?
Can Vaccinations Cause Autism?
Does Autism Spectrum Disorder Affect People All Around the World?
Is There a Correlation Between Epigenetics and Autism Spectrum Disorder?
How Does Autism Affect Regular Brain Functions as Well as Socialization Skills?
What Can Responses to Music in Autism Tell Us About the Nature of Musical Emotions?
Why Has the Incidence Rate of Autism Increased?
What Are the Most Effective Ways to Support/Provide Social Care For Autistic Adults?
Which Interventions Are Effective in the Development of Communication/Language Skills in Autism?
How Can Parents and Family Members Be Supported/Educated to Care For and Better Understand an Autistic Relative?
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Why Autism Awareness is Important

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144 comprehensive autism research paper topics that will help you.

July 28, 2021

Do you need autism research paper topics that will impress your educator to award you high grades? If yes, this article lists the best 140-plus ideas to consider for your papers and essays.

Simple Autism Topics for Research Paper

Perhaps, you want to write a paper about an easy topic. In that case, select the idea to work with from this category. Any of these topics can be a brilliant idea for an autism paper. Nevertheless, take your time to investigate it extensively, gather, and analyze data to develop a winning piece.

Investigating the autism spectrum disorder’s prevalence
Autism Diagnostic interview
What are the primary causes of autism?
Reasons for the increasing autism cases in children
Effective learning and teaching methods for autistic children
Mainstream education and autism
Are there advantages of being autistic?
What are the disadvantages of being autistic?
Why are some individuals autistic while others are not
Explain why some individuals have a good recall or memory skills
What should people know about autism?
Who are the top five most known autistic individuals in human history?
How healthcare workers assist autistic persons in their daily lives
What are humans yet to discover about autism?
Discuss autism stories that people have shared on social media
Describe the employment opportunities and limitations for autistic individuals
Describe a treatment that can reduce autistic individuals’ disadvantages
What is the primary cause of autism?
What role does music play in the life of an autistic person?
Explain autism diagnosis during the early stages
Describe the educational programs for autistic persons
What’s the average overview of an autistic person?
Explain ways of improving autistic people’s interactions
Explain an autistic individual’s behavior towards his family members?
How the chemical brain of an autistic person differs from that of a non-autistic individual
What are the most prominent research breakthroughs in autism?
Why autistic persons struggle to socialize with others
What normal individuals should learn from the brains of autistic persons
Describe the characteristics of autistic persons
Tips for training autistic persons when providing care
Things caregivers should know about autism to do an excellent job
How family members should behave towards autistic individuals

Autism Biology Topics Research Paper Ideas

Students can also write autism biology papers and score top grades. If interested in autism biology, here is a list of topics to consider for your research paper. Any of these topics can be the basis of a debate because people have varying views towards them. You need sufficient and reliable information to support your argument.

Is there sufficient evidence proving that environmental triggers are responsible for the rising autism cases?
Why is western society reporting higher autism prevalence?
Do literature and art help in raising awareness about autism?
Reviewing films whose basis is an autism spectrum disorder
How the media portrays autism and its effects
Prominent public figures that lived with autism for years
The impact of maternal age on autism
Asperger’s syndrome and autism- An explorative study
Analyzing the genome’s dark regions and their effect on autism mutation
Gene expression control and its impact on autism mutation
The connection between genetic variants and autism
Obesity and autism- Is there a correlation?
How a subtle genetic modification can affect an autistic person
Autism and fragile x syndrome
How brain homes affect autism
Autism and vasopressin- What’s the link?
Brain signature similarities with autism
Investigating the unusual sensory response in an autistic person
The effects of the cerebellum on an autistic person’s social behavior
Anybody that loves biology will be interested in reading a paper on any of these ideas. However, make sure that your essay is on-point.
Thought-Provoking Autism Controversial Issues to Write About
Perhaps, you want to research and write about a thought-provoking topic about autism. In that case, consider one of these issues.
Is autism a disorder or a difference?
Timeline and history of autism
Why are autism rates increasing dramatically?
Things that scientists have disproven about autism causes
Questionable and risky autism treatments
The best autism treatments
Should autistic children have a unique educational setting?
Which are the best educational options for autistic children?
Autistic children should have a unique home
Autism and vaccinations- Is there any relations?
Ways to raise autism awareness in society
Changing the autistic children’s future through early interventions
How educators can help children with autism
Ways to help autistic children with uncooperative parents
Can occupational therapy help autistic children?
DSM-V and autism
A comparison of autistic children’s and normal kids’ educational opportunities
Ways health officials can convince their clients that vaccines don’t cause autism
Should schools vaccinate children that haven’t received their shots because parents believe they cause autism?

Research Paper Topics Dealing with Autism and Education

Experts recommend teaching people and caregivers about autistic persons. Through training, educators, parents, and other people can know how to treat autistic persons. Here are good research paper topics on autism and education. These topics relate expert advice with parenting and the daily life of autistic individuals. But like the other ideas, they need thorough research to come up with impressive papers.

Ways to solve autistic children’s daily problems
Why is autism research necessary?
Differences in education among autistic kids and normal children
Different autism types
Understanding the struggles of students suffering from autism
What are the possible autism causes?
Managing parenting challenges when you have an autistic child
Ways to improve autistic children’s communication skills
How to enhance autistic kids’ coping skills
Addressing negative behaviors among autistic children
Increasing autistic children’s play skills
Ways to diagnose autism early in children
Ways to increase autistic children’s independence
Effects of autism in a single child on family members
Improving self-help among autistic children
How autism affects different developmental realms
Learning in autistic kids
Resources available for autistic people
Effects of autism on the learning process
Why do parents need training about autism?

Autism Research Analysis Paper Topics

Perhaps, you want to autism research topics you can analyze extensively in your paper or essay. If so, consider these ideas for your project. You can analyze any of these research topics on autism in your paper with proper references to impress the educator and earn the top grade in your class.

Qualities of an effective autism treatment plan
Autism signs that every parent should know
Reviewing autism in various regions
Analyzing the probability of medical treatment causing autism
Analysis of the effects of genetics on autism
Investigating the impact of an autistic person on a standard individual
Analysis of autism history
Ways adult patients can manage autism
Analyzing the employment opportunities for autistic people
Exploring parental education benefits in managing autism in children
Analyzing the variations in social implications depending on autistic spectrum disorder and gender
Analysis of the support autistic people need at the workplace
Examining the socio-cultural effects of autism on understanding and behavior
Do autistic children need special schools?- A detailed analysis
Investigating the contextual drives affecting autism understanding in society
Analyzing the peer group role in autism
Investigating the increasing autism prevalence in western society
Post-traumatic stress disorder- Analyzing its impact on parents with autistic kids
Exploring the cross-cultural experiences of autistic persons
Analyzing the role technology can play in improving autistic people’s social skills

Autism Research Questions

One of the best ways to develop good research topics is by asking questions about the subject you find interesting. For instance, you can brainstorm autism thesis topics by asking questions about this illness. Here are some of the queries you can ask about autism, which can form the basis of your paper.

Which is the most accepted theory about autism spectrum disorder’s pathophysiology?
How can caregivers improve service delivery when dealing with autistic persons?
How can ordinary people understand sensory processing among autistic persons?
How can companies encourage ordinary people to support autistic employees?
How can employers implement person-centered intervention to support autistic employees?
How can companies maximize the performance and potential of autistic people at the workplace?
How can hospitals improve autism diagnostic procedures?
How can hospitals ensure the appropriate diagnosis of autistic adults?
How can family members and parents provide quality care for autistic kids?
How can ordinary people support families and parents with autistic kids?
What support is ideal for autistic children?
Which environments are suitable for helping autistic persons achieve quality education and life skills?
How can society help autistic persons get the most from life?
Which interventions can enhance mental health in autistic persons?
How can caregiver reduce mental health issues among autistic persons?
How can caregivers adapt mental health interventions for autistic individuals?
Which interventions work in developing language skills in autistic persons?
How can society support social care for autistic adults?
Which intervention work in reducing anxiety among autistic people?
Is autism treatable?
Who suffers more, an autistic child or their family?
What facts do most people not know about autism?
Which brain part does autism damage?
Does autism escalate with age?
Is autism the same as brain damage?
How can you tell that your kid is not autistic?
Can a person inherit autism?
Does an autistic person have a higher risk of having an autistic child?
Is autism a disability?
How does level I differ from level II autism?
Which questions does the doctor ask during an autism assessment?

Students have many autism spectrum disorder research topics and questions to consider as titles for their papers. However, learners should pick exciting topics to develop outstanding pieces. If you are unable to select a topic and write an essay, seek professional writing help online. Expert writers can help you with topic selection or even write a high-quality, custom paper for you.

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Educational Interventions for Children and Youth with Autism: A 40-Year Perspective

Samuel l. odom.

1 University of North Carolina At Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC USA

2 San Diego State University, San Diego, CA USA

6 Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, CB 8040, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-8040 USA

Laura J. Hall

Kristi l. morin.

3 Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA USA

Bonnie R. Kraemer

Kara a. hume, nancy s. mcintyre.

4 University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL USA

Sallie W. Nowell

Jessica r. steinbrenner, brianne tomaszewski, leann dawalt.

5 University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI USA

Commemorating the 40 th anniversary of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) III, the purpose of this commentary is to describe school-based and school-relevant interventions and instructional approaches for children and youth with autism that have been developed and employed during that time period. The commentary begins with a brief description of foundational research that provides an historical context. Research themes shaped by science, ethics, social policy, and the changes in the DSM provide an organization for describing the evolution of intervention and instructional practices over the four previous decades. The commentary concludes with a discussion of school-contextual variables that influence implementation and the promise of the “iSciences” for closing the research to practice gap in the future.

In 1980 the American Psychiatric Association was finalizing diagnostic criteria that would shape the face of autism 1 in the future, and public schools in the United States (U.S.) had been offering educational services to children and youth with disabilities, as mandated by a federal law, for about four years. At that time, autism was a very low-prevalence disorder, occurring in only 2–5 children per 10,000 (National Research Council, 2001 ). Autism had not been established as an eligibility category for receiving special education services, although autistic children and youth were enrolled in special education under other eligibility definitions (e.g., mental retardation, other health impaired, severe emotional disorder). Across these years, the intervention landscape in education has changed drastically. In 2018, public schools in the United States provided special education services to 663,098 school-aged children and youth with autism (U. S. Department of Education, 2021 ), as compared to 18,903 in 1993 (U. S. Department of Education, 1995 ). As the context has changed over the years, important intervention practices have evolved– shaped by science, ethics, policy trends, and the changes in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). The purpose of this commentary is to examine this evolution, highlighting practices and interventions that have become, or could become, the technology and tradecraft of education as it is provided by U.S. educational systems. Although the educational system in the United States is the focus of this review, we propose that the evolution and identification of current practices has implications for the broader international context.

In the initial section of the paper we briefly describe the historical scientific precedents to practices that emerged in the intervention literature. The second section of this commentary will identify practices organized within themes and influences in education and intervention research over the last 40 years. The commentary will conclude with discussion of the research to practice gap and factors in the context of public schools that affect adoption and implementation.

Parameters of the Commentary

This paper is a commentary and not a systematic review. As such, it represents the perspectives of an informed research group that has decades of experience conducting and publishing research on school-based interventions for autistic children and youth. The grade range and approximate ages of participants extends from preschool, which begins at age 3, thorough graduation and post-school transition programs, which can be up to age 21. Discussion of early intervention for autistic children below the age of 3 and their families is not included in this review because usually state Departments of Education (i.e., the public schools) are not the lead agencies, there are different federal regulations, and the service context is quite different from school-based intervention. However, there are times that intervention practices overlap and are relevant for both early intervention and school-based programs. Last, we plan to draw content for the commentary from peer-reviewed journal articles although we will refer to landmark books or book chapters when relevant.

In this paper, we distinguish between intervention or instructional practices and comprehensive programs (Odom et al., 2010 ). We define practices as actions by teachers or other service providers, activities, and/or organizations of the environment to address a specific goal or outcomes (e.g., communicate in three-word sentences, social interaction with peers). Practices are more time-limited than programs in that they tend to be used until a specific learning goal is met. Comprehensive programs consist of a set of practices organized by a conceptual framework, cover multiple developmental or skill domains, are intensive (e.g., 20 + hours per week), and extend across a substantial period of time. In the commentary we will focus primarily on a discussion of practices.

Historical Precedents to Education Interventions

Diagnosis of a condition such as autism implies that there should be a way of intervening to prevent, ameliorate, or improve the condition. The most well-known early programs for children with autism were based on different theoretical models. Following a psycho-analytic model, Bettelheim ( 1967 ) theorized that autism resulted from emotionally cold mothers and their failure to establish relationships with their children. His “treatment” involved removing the child from the toxic maternal influence (i.e., a parentectomy) through enrollment in a residential program, with many parents later reporting iatrogenic effects for their children. In 1968, Churchill, Ferster, and DeMyer (1971) convened a colloquium at Indiana University Medical School to report and reflect on the most current research of the time. In addition to a discussion about the need for reliable diagnostic criteria for autism (i.e., a foreshadowing of the DSM process), two researchers described theories and intervention practices that countered Bettelheim’s psychogenic approach. Ivar Lovaas ( 1971 ) described the remarkable success of his application of behavioral principles to teaching strategies for young children with autism, which laid the groundwork for the intensive behavior therapy movement described in the next section. The second pioneer at the Indiana Colloquium was Eric Schopler (Schopler & Reichler, 1971 ) whose research was actively involving parents in their children’s learning and development. He and colleagues also designed environmental accommodations that would make learning and independence in classrooms more feasible for autistic children. These techniques evolved into the TEACCH program that is used frequently in the U.S. and internationally. In most programs for children and youth with autism today, one can identify practices that can be directly traced back to these early pioneering approaches.

By the year 2000, knowledge about instructional and intervention practices for children with autism had accumulated, and the National Academy of Science convened a committee to review the then current research. They produced an oft-cited and influential report entitled Educating Children with Autism (National Research Council, 2001 ). The report identified and described a variety of comprehensive programs for children with autism, many of which were operating in lab or community school settings. Importantly, the committee also identified effective, empirically-based intervention practices that focused on key areas of development of children with autism (e.g., social, communication, etc.), and specified the importance of intervention intensity (e.g., provision of services at least 25 h per week). The push of evidence-based medicine (Sackett et al., 1996 ) and requirements of federal law, extended the focus on evidence-based practices as the basis for education intervention. This evidence-based practice movement is described in a subsequent section and is a primary theme of current intervention practice in education.

Key Themes in Education for Autistic Children and Youth

As noted, the last 40 years has brought about significant changes in the types and quality of intervention practices available for use in educational programs for children and youth with autism. Key themes that reflect these change are related to adult-led and naturalistic forms of instruction, education in inclusive settings, forms and functions of communication, use of aversive strategies and positive behavior intervention and support, collateral mental health conditions, postschool outcomes, technology-assisted instruction and intervention, ineffective interventions, and search for evidence-based practices. In this section of the commentary, we will use these themes as an organizational framework for describing educational intervention approaches.

Adult-led and Naturalistic Forms of Instruction

In the 1980s, educational interventions for autistic children and youth were heavily adult-directed and based on applied behavior analysis (ABA). Over the last 40 years, adult-directed instruction has remained a primary education strategy, although “naturalistic” approaches have also emerged.

Adult-Directed and Discrete Trial Training

Drawing from the foundational studies in ABA (Wolf et al., 1964 ) and the elaboration of his own ABA work, Lovaas ( 1987 ) developed a discrete trial teaching program (DTT). In DTT, adults provide an instructional antecedent (i.e., teacher instruction), students emit a target behavior, and adults provide a consequence (potential reinforcer or error correction procedure) on a predetermined schedule (i.e., known as a three-term contingency). Usually adults provide a set of trials (i.e., call massed trials) targeting a specific skill. In Lovaas’ program, autistic children received a minimum of 40 h per week and had significantly better outcomes than autistic children who had received less intensive interventions of ten hours per week (Lovaas, 1987 ). The positive effects of this adult-directed approach were confirmed in a 4 ½ year follow-up of children in the study (McEachin et al., 1993 ) as well as international replications of the approach when conducted in schools (Eikeseth et al., 2002 ). As the outcomes of the research by Lovaas and colleagues became more well-known, parents began to advocate for use of ABA by school personnel, including through litigation (Yell & Drasgow, 2000 ). The use of DTT has become pervasive as an educational strategy. Discrete trials have been and continue to be used to teach many skills addressed in educational settings (Hall, 1997 ). More recent research conducted in schools has evaluated performance feedback on educators’ delivery of instruction (McKenny & Bristol, 2015 ), the effectiveness of extending one-to-one DTT to group instruction (Taubman, et al., 2001 ), and a comparison of immediate to delayed reinforcement on skill acquisition (Carroll et al., 2016 ).

Naturalistic Intervention

In the 1980s, researchers began to realize that the use of highly structured, adult-led DTT sessions as the primary approach alone had shortcomings, such as the failure to generalize learned skills, prompt-dependence, escape/avoidance behaviors, and the lack of spontaneous responding (see Schreibman et al., 2015 ). An alternative to adult-led intervention, incidental teaching was first established by Hart and Risley in 1975 with young children from low income families and later modified by McGee (1983) for children with autism. The intervention was still based on ABA, but “naturalistic” in that the antecedent was a motivating context (i.e., often in a typical classroom routine or activity), involved child-initiation of the targeted behavior (i.e., rather than responding to adult-initiated instruction), and provided access to reinforcers natural to the environment (McGee et al., 1985 ). Pivotal Response Training (Koegel et al., 1987 ) was an early application of such a naturalistic behavioral approach and more recently has been adapted for use as a classroom-based program for early elementary-aged children with autism (Suhrheinrich et al., 2020 ).

In 2015, researchers using naturalistic behavioral intervention approaches that were conceptually situated in a developmental theoretical perspective determined that their approaches shared many common features. They classified their interventions under an umbrella term called Naturalistic Developmental Behavioral Interventions (NDBI, Schreibman et al., 2015 ). These interventions employed the naturalistic behavioral intervention factors noted previously and incorporated developmental science in identifying the focus and scope of learning outcomes. Preschool examples of these included Enhanced Milieu Teaching (EMT) (Kaiser & Hester, 1994 ), Joint Attention, Symbolic Play, Engagement, and Regulation (JASPER; Kasari et al., 2006 ) and its adaptation for school settings (Advancing Social-Communication and Play (ASAP; Boyd et al., 2018 ), and the classroom versions of the Early Start Denver Model (Vivanti et al., 2019 ) and Pivotal Response Teaching (Suhrheinrich, et al., 2020 ). Despite the large body of evidence demonstrating the efficacy of NDBIs (Tiede & Walton, 2019 ), additional research is still needed to understand how to adapt NDBIs for older children, such as those attending K-12 schools (Schreibman et al., 2020 ).

Education in Inclusive Settings

In 2018, about 40% of autistic children who qualify for special education spend 80% or more of their time in general education (U. S. Department of Education, 2020) as compared to 9% in 1992–93 (U. S. Department of Education, 1995 ). One key influence is the broadened conceptualization of autism that identifies children and youth who do not have accompanying intellectual disability and who could benefit from the general education curriculum. With greater participation in general education has come a shift from a traditional life-skills intervention orientation to one that also includes a focus on academic and social skills (Spooner & Browder, 2015 ). A second key influence has been the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA) (2004), which requires inclusion in the least restrict environment to the extent that an appropriate education can be provided in that context. Although a four-fold increase in inclusive placements have occurred over the 25 year reporting period just noted, it is also important to note that more than 60% of autistic children qualifying for special education are only partially included (i.e., less than 80% of the time) or are primarily in a self-contained special education class.

Intervention and Instruction in Content Areas

In addition to the more general foci on adult-directed and naturalistic interventions and instruction in inclusive settings, a large proportion of the intervention research literature has focused on specific areas of learning needs for students with autism.

Explicit Instruction for Academic Skills

A growing body of research demonstrates that a variety of intervention approaches may explicitly address academic and school related goals (Plavnick et al, 2015 ). For example, in their review of evidence-based practices, Steinbrenner et al. ( 2020 ) identified 25 practices that address academic and/or school readiness skills. Task analysis, direct instruction, response-prompting procedures (e.g., model-lead-test), visual supports (e.g., graphic organizers), modeling, and time delay are all practices that have been linked to growth in academic skills (Fleury et al., 2014 ).

Various intentional combinations of the above explicit instructional practices implemented in inclusive and self-contained settings have demonstrated the capacity to improve reading comprehension across core content areas (Knight & Sartini, 2015 ), writing (Asaro-Saddler, 2016 ), and math skills (King et al., 2016 ) for autistic students with and without intellectual disability. Furthermore, structured inquiry and explicit instruction of social studies content (Schenning et al., 2013 ) and science terms and their applications (Taylor et al., 2020 ) have promoted growth in these subject areas for students across developmental and functioning levels. Building these academic skills to each student’s potential creates a foundation that will support independent living and future educational and vocational choices.

Interventions to Promote Social Engagement, Skills and Relationships

Difficulties engaging in social interactions with peers and adults, as well as establishing social relationships has always been one of the defining features of autism. Intervention approaches that have been used in education to promote social outcomes for children and youth with autism often employ adult-led and individualized skill training, peer-mediated approaches, and group-based social skills training.

Adult-led Teaching and Reinforcement Interventions

Some of the earliest intervention research on behavior of socially isolated children (i.e., autism was rarely used as a descriptor early on), employed adult use of reinforcement contingent on interaction with peers (Allen et al., 1964 ). From the early studies onward, investigators have used a variety of prompting, direct teaching techniques, and reinforcement with individual autistic children and youth, such as approaching peers and sharing desirable items like candy for young children (Kirby & Toler, 1970 ) and video games with adolescent peers (Gaylord-Ross et al., 1984 ), teaching social skills using scripts to support and prompt interaction on playgrounds (Krantz & McClannahan, 1993 ), and directly teaching play skills (Haring & Lovinger, 1987 ). Most recently, researchers have used a variety of other instructional approaches, such as self-management, video-modeling, and social narratives, to effectively promote autistic children and youth social engagement with peers (McKeithan, & Sabornie, 2020 ).

Social Reciprocity and Peer-Mediated Interventions

In 1977, Strain and Shores published an influential paper noting that much of the previous social intervention research focused on promoting individual social behaviors rather than reciprocal social interactions, which is the more natural basis for social exchanges. In subsequent research, they developed a peer-mediated approach in which typically developing children socially engaged children/youth with autism in ways that led to reciprocal interactions (Strain, et al., 1979 ). The early peer-mediated intervention research did increase the reciprocal social interaction of autistic children (Odom & Strain, 1986 ) and more recently, Kasari et al. ( 2012 ) reported positive changes in peer social networks when a peer-mediated intervention approach was employed in schools. To extend the peer-mediated approach to support autistic children’s/youth’s social relationships, Haring and Breen ( 1992 ) designed a social network intervention in which social groups of peers supported social engagement in multiple activities during a school day. Both peer-mediated and peer-social network intervention have been adapted and employed in elementary (Kamps et al., 2015 ) and high schools (Carter et al., 2019), with this research literature remaining currently quite active (McKeithan & Sabornie, 2020 ).

Group-Based Social skills Training

For students with autism who are able to participate in psycho-educational group instruction, social skills training group interventions have been developed, more often for middle and high school age groups. Generally, the intervention is led by an educator, has a sequenced set of lessons, teaches specific skills (e.g., emotional recognition in others, problems solving in social situations), and may have homework assignments. Although these interventions have often been delivered in clinical setting (Jonsson et al., 2019 ), there are examples of social skills training programs, such as the Program for the Education and Enrichment of Relational Skills (PEERS®) (Laugeson et al., 2014 ), that have been employed in school settings, generating positive outcomes in terms of skill acquisition for participants with autism.

Forms and Functions of Communication for Autistic Children and Youth

Communication is an essential developmental skill with vast variation in patterns of acquisition and outcomes for students with autism (Tager-Flusberg et al., 2005 ). Communication interventions have evolved in the past 40 years from focusing mostly on oral “expressive” language outcomes to thinking in tandem about communicative form (e.g., sign, AAC) and function across pragmatic contexts, as well as building foundational skills (e.g., joint attention).

Communication and Verbal Language Skills

Interventions targeting verbal communication skills for students with autism have fallen into three categories: behavioral, developmental, and naturalistic (Sandbank et al., 2020 ). The earliest intervention approaches used ABA principles and discrete trial training, generating positive effects on expressive language in students with ASD (e.g., Reichow et al., 2018 ). An individual adult-led therapy approach, sometimes called a pull-out model and usually not as structured as DTT, continues to be a primary mode of speech therapy in schools. A variety of other approaches that include behavioral practices (e.g., antecedent-based interventions, video-modeling, functional communication training) have been shown to produce positive communication outcomes (Steinbrenner et al., 2020 ). Developmentally based approaches, such as SCERTS (Social-Communication, Emotional Regulation & Transactional Supports) (Prizant et al., 2003 ), have been applied with autistic students to address verbal communication outcomes. Although originally designed as a family based-model, Morgan et al. ( 2018 ) has documented the efficacy of SCERTS in schools. In general, developmental interventions have shown some positive effects on foundational social communication outcomes for students with autism but with little evidence of cascading effects on language (e.g., Sandbank et al., 2020 ).

An alternative approach to pull-out intervention, sometimes described as a “push-in”, is naturalistic in nature and focuses on the social and functional use of language in context. For young autistic children, NDBIs (see previous discussion) are often used to enhance language acquisition. Though widely supported by randomized controlled trials (Sandbank et al., 2020 ), these are more often employed in clinic or home settings rather than classrooms, with some exceptions [e.g., classroom applications of EMT (Dubin et al., 2019 )]. In current practice, service providers employ an individualized, eclectic blend of strategies from these behavioral and naturalistic approaches to target verbal communication skills.

Interventions for Nonverbal Children and Alternative and Augmentative Communication (AAC)

AAC is an alternative to teaching oral communication for autistic children and youth who are nonverbal (Iacono et al., 2016 ). Notably, there is also consistent evidence that AAC does not inhibit and often supports the development of spoken language for many autistic children with limited verbal communication skills (Schlosser & Wendt, 2008 ). AAC offers opportunities to build communication skills to augment limited spoken language, including no- and low-tech AAC (e.g., sign language), as well as high-tech AAC. Over the past 40 years, the proliferation of technology has changed options for AAC, especially high-tech AAC such as speech-generating devices (SGDs), which now include apps that can be used on tablets replacing dedicated SGDs (Lorah et al., 2015 ).

High-tech SGDs can be programmed for more diversity of vocabulary and communicative functions and have improved the communication of children with autism (Logan et al., 2017 ). However, it is critical to recognize that the SGDs provide an alternative mode of communication but may need to be paired with strategies to enhance communication use in typical contexts. Notably, recent work in schools has combined AAC more intentionally with other interventions such as peer-mediated intervention (e.g., Thieman-Bourque et al., 2017) and JASPER (e.g., Kasari et al., 2014 ) to increase communication of children with autism. Low-tech AAC has also proven effective, such as the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS; Frost & Bondy, 2002 ). PECS uses ABA strategies combined with a concrete representation of physically exchanging symbols to support understanding of early communicative exchanges and contributes to positive gains in communication (Ganz et al., 2012 ).

Aversive Strategies and Increased Focus on Positive Behavior Supports and Intervention

Although challenging behavior is not a defining characteristic of ASD, limited social communication skills and the strong adherence to ritual and routine can lead to challenging behaviors for some autistic children and youth (Esteves et al., 2021 ). The effectiveness of ABA to reduce challenging behavior has been demonstrated through research spanning the previous 40 years (Matson, et al., 1996 ), with some of those interventions employing aversive consequences (e.g., water spray, lemon juice, mild shock) for extreme and dangerous behavior (Gerhardt et al., 1991 ). In the 1980s, concerns were raised about the confirmed misuse of aversive procedures with recommendations to disallow their use (Berkman & Meyer, 1988 ). Heated debates ensued in which some advocates proposed that individuals should have the right to effective treatment (which could include aversives) for serious challenging behavior such as self-injury (Van Houten et al., 1988 ). Opponents questioned the ethics of using aversives when alternative nonaversive intervention strategies were available (Horner, et al., 1990 ). A major contribution to current policies was the seminal work of Iwata et al. ( 1994 ), who demonstrated that challenging behaviors could serve multiple functions. This research paved the way for use of functional behavior assessment prior to designing any intervention plan (Horner et al., 2002 ).

The national Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) movement arose out of the heated debates of the 1980s (Dunlap et al., 2011 ). The technology of PBIS included behavioral assessments that could identify the function the problem behavior, selection of strategies that would prevent a behavior from occurring if possible, and teaching alternative and adaptive behaviors rather than focusing solely on suppressing maladaptive ones. Data-based decision making, developing functional skill sets, and being respectful of one’s dignity serves as the guiding principles of PBIS today (Kincaid, 2018 ).

This positive approach to supporting individuals who displayed challenging behavior was appealing to many families and agencies, including the federal government. In the 1997 and 2004 reauthorizations to the IDEA, the U.S. Department of Education mandated that, when students display challenging behavior that interferes with learning school personnel must conduct a functional behavior assessment before developing a behavior intervention plan and consider positive behavior interventions to support the student. Although the possibility of using aversive intervention still exists when all other alternatives have been tried, the mandate changed the way schools responded to challenging behavior. Currently, many students with autism attend schools that employ School-wide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (SWPBIS). This program focuses on a tiered set of interventions that begins with proactive, preventative strategies and moves to progressive more intensive behavioral interventions as needed. SWPBIS has been employed in more than 26,000 school across the United States (Sugai & Horner, 2020 ).

Collateral Mental Health Conditions

Across the decades, behavioral and educational intervention providers have taken a broader view of the factors associated with behaviors viewed as problematic (e.g., stereotypies, self-injurious behavior, tantrums and meltdowns), and there has become a greater awareness of mental health conditions as one of the possible underlying factors. In the DSM-5, the diagnosis of ASD includes the specification of association with another mental or behavioral factor when applicable (APA, 2013 ). Mental health conditions are highly prevalent in individuals with ASD and rates are higher than those in the general population. The highest reported conditions include anxiety, depression, ADHD, schizophrenia, sleep–wake disorders, conduct disorders, bipolar disorders, and obsessive–compulsive disorders (Lai et al., 2019 ). Although few school-based interventions target mental health, there are some exceptions. Cognitive behavioral/instructional strategies, including cognitive behavioral therapy, are identified as an evidence-based practice for mental health outcomes (Steinbrenner, 2020). While most evidence of cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety has been clinic-based, recently studies have adapted interventions for the school settings and found positive effects. For example, Luxford et al. ( 2017 ) used the Exploring Feelings CBT to Manage Anxiety curriculum to teach students to understand and manage their emotions. In addition, a family- focused intervention, Facing Your Fears , has also been adapted for the school setting and incorporates parent educational sessions (Reaven et al., 2020 ).

Post-School Outcomes

The period of secondary transition for youth with autism and other developmental disabilities has changed significantly over the past 40 years. Although post-school outcomes are still less than optimal for this population, gains have been made. In the 1980s and early 1990s outcomes for young adults with autism were restrictive in nature, with most living at home and working in sheltered workshops or attending day activity programs. Today, postschool outcome data from the National Longitudinal Transition Study 2 (NLTS2) indicate that 21% of young adults with autism are employed full time in paid work in the community, with nearly 36% having attended a 2- or 4-year college after exiting high-school (Roux et al., 2015 ). Conceptual models of post-school transition have evolved over time, which has advanced the field. In the 1980s, early models of transition were uni-dimensional equating transition success with competitive employment (e.g., Will, 1984 ). In later years transition success was expanded to encompass community adjustment, which included not only a pillar of employment, but also pillars of community living and social networks (Halpern, 1985 ). Federal laws have also paved the way for increased resources and regulations regarding transition programming for youth with autism. The 1990 reauthorization of IDEA with its mandate of individual transition plans for youth with disabilities beginning at age 16, was instrumental in prescribing specific elements that must be incorporated in an Individualized Education Program, including specific post-school outcomes and needed transition services. These targets are critical and serve to guide the programming and curriculum at the secondary level.

The early work of Kohler ( 1996 ) provided a general Taxonomy for Transition Programming that guided subsequent identification of educational transition practices for secondary students with autism by the National Technical Assistance Center on Transition (NTACT, 2020 ). Outcome data for young adults with autism and other developmental disabilities have indicated that more time spent in general education classrooms is associated with increased academic skills and knowledge, receipt of a high school diploma, and/or increased access to typical peers, which promotes social relationships and inclusion and ultimately more integration in the community (Landmark et al., 2010 ). Youth participation in both paid and unpaid work experiences during high school is also correlated with better outcomes in adulthood, including competitive or supported employment, number of hours worked, and hourly wage (Test et al., 2009 ). Family involvement in the educational and transition planning process is also critical, particularly given that family members are often the lifelong caregivers or support providers. One example of a research based program that establishes a collaborative planning process involving families and teachers in transition planning is the COMPASS model developed by Ruble et al. ( 2018 ). Although such planning and preparing for the post-school future is critical, many autistic students exit the school system with no support systems in place. Data published in the National Autism Indicators Report: Transition Into Young Adulthood indicates that 1 in 4 young adults with autism had no access to services since leaving high school (Roux et al., 2015 ).

Social skills and functional life skills, as well as vocational skills, are critical for supporting success in adulthood (Dell’Armo & Tasse, 2019). Intervention practices to address these skills have demonstrated efficacy for adolescents with autism. These include antecedent-based interventions, modeling, peer-based interventions, prompting, reinforcement, social skills training, task analysis, time delay, video modeling, and visual supports (Steinbrenner et al., 2020 ). However, comprehensive, empirically supported educational and employment programs for transition age youth with autism are limited. One exception is Project SEARCH. Project SEARCH is an intensive year long program for high-school students with disabilities that involves hands-on work experience along with skills training and placement assistance (Rutkowskia et al, 2006 ). The model integrates classroom instruction with on-the-job training and connects services and supports from educational and rehabilitation professionals to the employment setting. Wehman and colleagues (2020) have applied the Project SEARCH model with autistic adolescents and, in a series of studies culminating in a multisite randomized trial, have found consistently positive vocational outcomes and post-school vocational placements.

Self-Determination

For young adults with autism, self-determination is associated with positive post-school outcomes (Zalewska et al., 2016 ). Self-determination refers to the ability of, and opportunity for, students to make their own decisions and advocate for themselves (Shogren et al., 2015 ). Secondary students with ASD must be able to identify the types of supports and accommodations they need and must be able to articulate these needs to receive those services in college or on the job. However, due to the unique communication and social needs of students with ASD, specific educational and environmental components may be necessary to foster self-determined behavior (Wehmeyer et al., 2010 ). While no intervention approaches have included high school students with ASD exclusively, one evidence-based transition curriculum that has included a subpopulation of students with ASD and co-occurring intellectual disability is Self-Determined Learning Model of Instruction (SDLMI; Shogren et al., 2019 ). The SLDMI consists of three phases: (1) to define and set goals; (2) develop a self-management action plan and; (3) self-monitor and self-evaluation. SLDMI is associated with positive outcomes including increased self-determination, student-directed transition planning, increased access to the general curriculum, improved classroom behavior, and student attaining educationally relevant goals (Hagiwara et al., 2017 ).

Technology-Assisted Instruction and Interventions

Advances in technology are ubiquitous in nearly everyone’s life today, and in fact space constraints allow only a brief coverage of this rapidly expanding intervention area. For this paper, we define technology-assisted interventions as “an electronic item/equipment, application, or virtual network that is used to intentionally increase, maintain, and/or improve daily living, work/productivity, and recreation/leisure capabilities of adolescents with autism spectrum disorders” (Odom et al., 2015 , p. 3806). Forty years ago, the application of technology to instruction for individuals with disabilities was just emerging, with most of the applications bound to mainframe or then a new technology, desktop computers (Strain & Odom, 1985 ). Advances in smart-phones, tablets, telecommunication, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and social media, all have had implications for use in education for students with autism. For example, tablets have been used as personal organizers that contain visual schedules, auditory prompts, and notetaking (Chelkowski et al., 2019 ). Smartphones and digital cameras also allow teachers to easily capture video examples of the skills that autistic children/youth learning and using those example as video-models (Dueñas et al., 2019 ). Technology has been used to deliver the content of instruction through traditional computer-assisted instruction ( LeBlanc et al., 2017 ), and tablets (Spooner et al., 2014 ). At this writing, we are in the midst of a pandemic and in-school instruction in many districts has halted. Teaching remotely through telecommunication and computer technology has become the modal form of instruction. Although not without its downsides (e.g., lack of access to the technology, knowledge of computer “etiquette”, absence of direct adult and peer mediation), there are empirical demonstrations of remote instruction for and learning by students with autism (Parsons et al., 2019 ). In addition, professional development of teacher and other service providers working with children/youth with autism has been delivered through didactic webinars, remote coaching, and self-paced instructional modules introducing EBPs (Sam et al., 2020 ).

Ineffective Interventions

For children and youth with autism, advocates and purveyors have proposed interventions and treatment that at the least are not effective and at the most are harmful. From the field of health, interventions such as hyperbaric chambers and chelation therapy have been proposed as “cutting edge” therapies (Siri & Lyons, 2014 ), despite their limited evidence of efficacy and possible harm. The field of education is no different, and at times practitioners adopt ineffective or even harmful practices. The most prevalent in education has been the use of facilitated communication (FC). Originally developed in Australia in the 1970s, FC became popular in the United States in the 1980s (Biklen & Schubert, 1991 ). In this technique a facilitator (adult teacher or parent) supports (physically) an autistic individuals’ arm or hand as they spell out words that communicate their thoughts. Over the last 25 years more than 19 rigorous experimental studies have demonstrated that the origin of the communication is the facilitator, not the person with a disability (Ganz et al., 2017), and it is primarily viewed as a discredited instructional method. However, adapted forms of the FC approach have emerged recently under titles such as rapid prompting method and supported typing (Pena, 2019 ), with rigorous systematic reviews again finding no evidence of effects (Schlosser et al., 2019 ).

Other ineffective intervention approaches for children and youth with ASD that appear in practice also have been largely discounted. For example, auditory integration therapy is a technique that could be provided by a trained audiologist as part of a related service but has been discredited by the American Academy of Pediatrics ( 2010 ). Children/youth with autism often experience sensory issues (e.g., loud noises are disturbing, touch is aversive). In schools often “sensory” interventions are provided. There is evidence that the Sensory Integration Therapy™ developed by Jean Ayres ( 2005 ) can be effective if provided by a trained therapist (Schaaf et al., 2014 ). Conversely, a variety of other “sensory” interventions such as weighted vests, sensory diets, or sensory rooms have little evidence of effectiveness (Case-Smith et al., 2015 ), although they are often used in school. One approach to reducing the number of ineffective, sometime fraudulent, interventions is to identify and broadly disseminate information about practices that are effective.

Evidence-Based Practices for Children and Youth with Autism

To counter the proliferation and use of ineffective and even harmful practices, there have been efforts to systematically identify intervention practices and programs that do have evidence of effectiveness. This evidence-based practice movement in education took the lead from the evidence-based medicine movement, originating with Cochrane ( 1972 ) and carried forward by Sackett et al. ( 1996 ), as well as several organizations that conduct and post systematic review of practices (e.g., Cochrane Collaboration, Campbell Collaboration, What Works Clearinghouse). Several research groups have conducted large scale, systematic reviews to identify studies that meet methodological standards and indicate positive effects on outcomes for autistic students. For example, the National Clearinghouse on Autism Evidence and Practice, reviewed the intervention literature from 1990 to 2017 and identified 28 EBPs for individuals with autism ages 0–21 (Hume et al., 2021 ; Steinbrenner et al., 2020 ). In an independent and parallel review, the National Standards Project reviewed the literature from 1957–2012, which identified 14 established practices for individuals under age 22 (NSP, National Autism Center, 2015 ). Comparison of an earlier review by NCAEP researchers (Wong et al., 2015 ) and the NSP review found substantial overlap between the two sets of practices ( https://autismpdc.fpg.unc.edu/sites/autismpdc.fpg.unc.edu/files/imce/documents/Matrix%20NPDC%20NSP%20v3.pdf ). For older youth with autism, the National Technical Assistance Center on Transition identified 24 EBPs related to transition outcomes for students across disability areas (NTACT, 2020 ). As the autism intervention literature continues to accelerate rapidly, the ongoing identification, dissemination, and most importantly, support for broad implementation of EBPs, will remain a critical need in the field.

Schools as Contexts for Implementing Interventions

The research-to-practice gap is a challenge for school-based programs, despite the evidence of practices that generate positive outcomes for autistic children and youth as described previously. In this section, we describe features of the school context that pose challenges for implementation of effective practices. A variety of approaches, which we call the iSciences, have become prominent as methods to address these barriers to implementation. These approaches will be identified and described.

Complexity of School Settings

Although the characteristics and settings for special education for children with autism have changed over the past 40 years, gaps between research and practice exists. Challenges to implementation of evidence-based practices relate to school structure, characteristics and preparation of personnel, and disparities in education settings and services.

Structure of Schools

Serving autistic students in school settings is a complex undertaking, as the population is notably heterogeneous, which requires individualized programming across a variety of settings and professionals. Selecting practices that are effective across context and feasible for implementation by general educators, special educators, paraprofessionals, and related service providers is difficult (Barry et al., 2020 ), as is coordinating opportunities for thoughtful collaboration and professional development for the team (Sinai-Gavrilov et al., 2019 ). The competing demands for school resources continue to mount, with increased pressure on schools to have students perform well on high stakes testing and meet rigorous academic requirements for graduation. This pressure limits autistic students’ access to specialized instruction related to social interaction and communication, transition preparedness, life skills, and coping skills (Snell-Rood et al., 2020 ). These structural factors may affect overall program quality for students with autism, which has proven to be low in schools across the country (Kraemer et al., 2020 ). High quality programs serve as a foundation for the implementation of EBPs, and thus poor program quality, as measured by school and classroom climate and instructional features, may itself serve as barrier to EBP implementation (Odom et al., 2018 ).

Effective education for all students with ASD requires knowledgeable and skilled school personnel. Survey results reveal that pre-service preparation programs may not sufficiently prepare teachers to use evidence-based practices (Morrier et al., 2011 ), or prepare principals to arrange effective inclusion experiences (Lyons, 2016 ). Even if program graduates are well prepared, students with autism will not benefit from their skills if educators leave the field. The U.S. Department of Education consistently identifies special education as an area of teacher shortage (Cross, 2017 ). In their review of the attrition and retention literature, Billingsley and Bettini ( 2019 ) found that special educators are more likely to leave as a result of factors such as demanding working conditions, and a lack of support from administrators, colleagues, and paraprofessionals.

Creating systematic professional development (PD) opportunities are likely to limit attrition, support school personnel that did not receive autism focused pre-service training and provide updated information on research based practices. An essential feature of an effective PD system is the use of competent coaches, identified in the implementation science literature as a critical driver for sustained change (Fixsen et al., 2009 ). Coaching has shown to be far more effective in changing teacher practices than traditional PD (e.g., workshop training alone). Paraprofessionals also are in need of PD, particularly in the use of evidence-based practices (Barrio & Hollingshead, 2017 ). Ideally the PD would provide opportunities for fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and the identified benefits for the students they serve (Biggs, 2016 ).

Disparities in Schools

Another challenge plaguing schools is the issue of disparity, which includes disparities at district, school, and child levels. At school and district levels, there are differences in resources such as funding and personnel (e.g., Mason-Williams, 2015 ), which may impact the capacity of schools to uptake and sustain evidence-based approaches for serving children with autism. At the child level, children from minoritized racial and ethnic groups, as well as children of parents with lower levels of education are less likely to receive related services or autism-specific therapies than their peers (Smith et al., 2020 ), and there are also diagnostic disparities (Maenner et al., 2020 ). Collectively, these disparities may be contributing to racial/ethnic and socioeconomic inequalities throughout the education experience for students with autism as well as during transition out of schools (Eilenberg et al.; 2019 ) and beyond.

Emergence of iSciences

To address the research to practice gap in educational programs for autistic children, and the barriers described previously, the iSciences have emerged. Although all the approaches we describe here do not all begin with the letter “I”, when employed in education they have in common the goal of moving evidence-based practices about effective instruction and intervention into use in educational programs for children and youth with autism. Space constraints prevent all but an acknowledgement of their foci. Information science is the “effective collection, storage, retrieval, and use of information (p. 2570, Saracevic, 2009 ) and has been an integral part of efforts to share information about evidence-based practices (Sam et al., 2020 ) and support data-based decision-making. Improvement science (Lewis, 2015 ) has emerged as an iterative process for developing and testing interventions in schools as well as improving the applications of interventions within specific school contexts. Similarly, Diffusion of Innovation theory (Rogers, 2003 ) attempts to explain how a new practice or idea spreads through social systems, and Dingfelder and Mandell ( 2011 ) have proposed that it may be an effective approach for promoting the use of effective practices. Dissemination theory , an offshoot of Diffusion Theory (Dearing, 2008 ), focuses more on societal “sectors” as social networks and implementation in complex organizations, which is also a feature of implementation science. Last, Implementation science , in its application for school-based programs, is the process for promoting the practitioner’s use of a program or intervention by addressing factors in the context (e.g., professional development, coaching) or in the system of influence operating outside of the immediate context (e.g., administrative leadership and support) (Odom et al., 2020 ). Although all of these iSciences hold promise in closing the research to practice gap, to date Implementation Science has been employed most often in educational programs for students with autism.

Our understanding of autism and how to best serve autistic students in school settings has changed considerably since the 1980s, a time period now described by autistic adults as “The Lost Generation,” due to their limited access to early diagnosis, intervention, and evidence-based practices (Lai & Baron-Cohen, 2015 ). Across the 40-year history, since the publication of DSM III, educational interventions and services for children and youth with autism have expanded greatly. The evolution of the DSM system, as well as reliable and valid diagnostic instruments (Lord et al., 2012) has created a more reliable process for identifying autism in educational systems (i.e., in the U.S. educational diagnoses are very similar to the DSM criteria). This, in turn, has led to greater awareness of the need for interventions and instruction that can be delivered in school contexts. In addition, as educational and behavioral theory expand and evolve, we see shifts in how and where students with autism are served, the immediate and post-school outcomes we value, and the methods we use to reach those outcomes. These changes contribute to the need for new knowledge, and thus our rapidly accelerating intervention literature base. The more recent advances in and adoption of strategies that support the use of EBPs in school systems increase the likelihood of closing the research to practice gap that continues to exist in education and uphold the promise of a free and appropriate education for students with autism.

Acknowledgments

A postdoctoral research training program (R324B160035) from the Institute of Education Sciences, U. S. Department of Education, partially supported the development of this commentary. Views expressed in this commentary are the authors’ and do not necessarily reflect those of the funding agency.

Author Contributions

This paper represents a consensus of members of this research group, and as such all had meaningful input. The order of authorship conveys the order of magnitude of individual authors’ contributions to the tasks of producing the paper, which were conceptualizing, researching, and writing individual sections, editing, and proofing the final draft of the manuscript.

Declaration

Because this is a commentary that does not involve human subjects, approval by our Human Subjects Research committee was not required. The authors have no conflict of interests to disclose related to this paper.

1 In this commentary we will use the terms “autism” and “autism spectrum disorder (ASD)” synonymously as well as both person-first and identify-first descriptors.

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, the complete ib extended essay guide: examples, topics, and ideas.

International Baccalaureate (IB)

IB students around the globe fear writing the Extended Essay, but it doesn't have to be a source of stress! In this article, I'll get you excited about writing your Extended Essay and provide you with the resources you need to get an A on it.

If you're reading this article, I'm going to assume you're an IB student getting ready to write your Extended Essay. If you're looking at this as a potential future IB student, I recommend reading our introductory IB articles first, including our guide to what the IB program is and our full coverage of the IB curriculum .

IB Extended Essay: Why Should You Trust My Advice?

I myself am a recipient of an IB Diploma, and I happened to receive an A on my IB Extended Essay. Don't believe me? The proof is in the IBO pudding:

If you're confused by what this report means, EE is short for Extended Essay , and English A1 is the subject that my Extended Essay topic coordinated with. In layman's terms, my IB Diploma was graded in May 2010, I wrote my Extended Essay in the English A1 category, and I received an A grade on it.

What Is the Extended Essay in the IB Diploma Programme?

The IB Extended Essay, or EE , is a mini-thesis you write under the supervision of an IB advisor (an IB teacher at your school), which counts toward your IB Diploma (learn more about the major IB Diploma requirements in our guide) . I will explain exactly how the EE affects your Diploma later in this article.

For the Extended Essay, you will choose a research question as a topic, conduct the research independently, then write an essay on your findings . The essay itself is a long one—although there's a cap of 4,000 words, most successful essays get very close to this limit.

Keep in mind that the IB requires this essay to be a "formal piece of academic writing," meaning you'll have to do outside research and cite additional sources.

The IB Extended Essay must include the following:

A title page
Contents page
Introduction
Body of the essay
References and bibliography

Additionally, your research topic must fall into one of the six approved DP categories , or IB subject groups, which are as follows:

Group 1: Studies in Language and Literature
Group 2: Language Acquisition
Group 3: Individuals and Societies
Group 4: Sciences
Group 5: Mathematics
Group 6: The Arts

Once you figure out your category and have identified a potential research topic, it's time to pick your advisor, who is normally an IB teacher at your school (though you can also find one online ). This person will help direct your research, and they'll conduct the reflection sessions you'll have to do as part of your Extended Essay.

As of 2018, the IB requires a "reflection process" as part of your EE supervision process. To fulfill this requirement, you have to meet at least three times with your supervisor in what the IB calls "reflection sessions." These meetings are not only mandatory but are also part of the formal assessment of the EE and your research methods.

According to the IB, the purpose of these meetings is to "provide an opportunity for students to reflect on their engagement with the research process." Basically, these meetings give your supervisor the opportunity to offer feedback, push you to think differently, and encourage you to evaluate your research process.

The final reflection session is called the viva voce, and it's a short 10- to 15-minute interview between you and your advisor. This happens at the very end of the EE process, and it's designed to help your advisor write their report, which factors into your EE grade.

Here are the topics covered in your viva voce :

A check on plagiarism and malpractice
Your reflection on your project's successes and difficulties
Your reflection on what you've learned during the EE process

Your completed Extended Essay, along with your supervisor's report, will then be sent to the IB to be graded. We'll cover the assessment criteria in just a moment.

We'll help you learn how to have those "lightbulb" moments...even on test day!

What Should You Write About in Your IB Extended Essay?

You can technically write about anything, so long as it falls within one of the approved categories listed above.

It's best to choose a topic that matches one of the IB courses , (such as Theatre, Film, Spanish, French, Math, Biology, etc.), which shouldn't be difficult because there are so many class subjects.

Here is a range of sample topics with the attached extended essay:

Biology: The Effect of Age and Gender on the Photoreceptor Cells in the Human Retina
Chemistry: How Does Reflux Time Affect the Yield and Purity of Ethyl Aminobenzoate (Benzocaine), and How Effective is Recrystallisation as a Purification Technique for This Compound?
English: An Exploration of Jane Austen's Use of the Outdoors in Emma
Geography: The Effect of Location on the Educational Attainment of Indigenous Secondary Students in Queensland, Australia
Math: Alhazen's Billiard Problem
Visual Arts: Can Luc Tuymans Be Classified as a Political Painter?

You can see from how varied the topics are that you have a lot of freedom when it comes to picking a topic . So how do you pick when the options are limitless?

How to Write a Stellar IB Extended Essay: 6 Essential Tips

Below are six key tips to keep in mind as you work on your Extended Essay for the IB DP. Follow these and you're sure to get an A!

#1: Write About Something You Enjoy

You can't expect to write a compelling essay if you're not a fan of the topic on which you're writing. For example, I just love British theatre and ended up writing my Extended Essay on a revolution in post-WWII British theatre. (Yes, I'm definitely a #TheatreNerd.)

I really encourage anyone who pursues an IB Diploma to take the Extended Essay seriously. I was fortunate enough to receive a full-tuition merit scholarship to USC's School of Dramatic Arts program. In my interview for the scholarship, I spoke passionately about my Extended Essay; thus, I genuinely think my Extended Essay helped me get my scholarship.

But how do you find a topic you're passionate about? Start by thinking about which classes you enjoy the most and why . Do you like math classes because you like to solve problems? Or do you enjoy English because you like to analyze literary texts?

Keep in mind that there's no right or wrong answer when it comes to choosing your Extended Essay topic. You're not more likely to get high marks because you're writing about science, just like you're not doomed to failure because you've chosen to tackle the social sciences. The quality of what you produce—not the field you choose to research within—will determine your grade.

Once you've figured out your category, you should brainstorm more specific topics by putting pen to paper . What was your favorite chapter you learned in that class? Was it astrophysics or mechanics? What did you like about that specific chapter? Is there something you want to learn more about? I recommend spending a few hours on this type of brainstorming.

One last note: if you're truly stumped on what to research, pick a topic that will help you in your future major or career . That way you can use your Extended Essay as a talking point in your college essays (and it will prepare you for your studies to come too!).

#2: Select a Topic That Is Neither Too Broad nor Too Narrow

There's a fine line between broad and narrow. You need to write about something specific, but not so specific that you can't write 4,000 words on it.

You can't write about WWII because that would be a book's worth of material. You also don't want to write about what type of soup prisoners of war received behind enemy lines, because you probably won’t be able to come up with 4,000 words of material about it. However, you could possibly write about how the conditions in German POW camps—and the rations provided—were directly affected by the Nazis' successes and failures on the front, including the use of captured factories and prison labor in Eastern Europe to increase production. WWII military history might be a little overdone, but you get my point.

If you're really stuck trying to pinpoint a not-too-broad-or-too-narrow topic, I suggest trying to brainstorm a topic that uses a comparison. Once you begin looking through the list of sample essays below, you'll notice that many use comparisons to formulate their main arguments.

I also used a comparison in my EE, contrasting Harold Pinter's Party Time with John Osborne's Look Back in Anger in order to show a transition in British theatre. Topics with comparisons of two to three plays, books, and so on tend to be the sweet spot. You can analyze each item and then compare them with one another after doing some in-depth analysis of each individually. The ways these items compare and contrast will end up forming the thesis of your essay!

When choosing a comparative topic, the key is that the comparison should be significant. I compared two plays to illustrate the transition in British theatre, but you could compare the ways different regional dialects affect people's job prospects or how different temperatures may or may not affect the mating patterns of lightning bugs. The point here is that comparisons not only help you limit your topic, but they also help you build your argument.

Comparisons are not the only way to get a grade-A EE, though. If after brainstorming, you pick a non-comparison-based topic and are still unsure whether your topic is too broad or narrow, spend about 30 minutes doing some basic research and see how much material is out there.

If there are more than 1,000 books, articles, or documentaries out there on that exact topic, it may be too broad. But if there are only two books that have any connection to your topic, it may be too narrow. If you're still unsure, ask your advisor—it's what they're there for! Speaking of advisors...

Don't get stuck with a narrow topic!

#3: Choose an Advisor Who Is Familiar With Your Topic

If you're not certain of who you would like to be your advisor, create a list of your top three choices. Next, write down the pros and cons of each possibility (I know this sounds tedious, but it really helps!).

For example, Mr. Green is my favorite teacher and we get along really well, but he teaches English. For my EE, I want to conduct an experiment that compares the efficiency of American electric cars with foreign electric cars.

I had Ms. White a year ago. She teaches physics and enjoyed having me in her class. Unlike Mr. Green, Ms. White could help me design my experiment.

Based on my topic and what I need from my advisor, Ms. White would be a better fit for me than would Mr. Green (even though I like him a lot).

The moral of my story is this: do not just ask your favorite teacher to be your advisor . They might be a hindrance to you if they teach another subject. For example, I would not recommend asking your biology teacher to guide you in writing an English literature-based EE.

There can, of course, be exceptions to this rule. If you have a teacher who's passionate and knowledgeable about your topic (as my English teacher was about my theatre topic), you could ask that instructor. Consider all your options before you do this. There was no theatre teacher at my high school, so I couldn't find a theatre-specific advisor, but I chose the next best thing.

Before you approach a teacher to serve as your advisor, check with your high school to see what requirements they have for this process. Some IB high schools require your IB Extended Essay advisor to sign an Agreement Form , for instance.

Make sure that you ask your IB coordinator whether there is any required paperwork to fill out. If your school needs a specific form signed, bring it with you when you ask your teacher to be your EE advisor.

#4: Pick an Advisor Who Will Push You to Be Your Best

Some teachers might just take on students because they have to and aren't very passionate about reading drafts, only giving you minimal feedback. Choose a teacher who will take the time to read several drafts of your essay and give you extensive notes. I would not have gotten my A without being pushed to make my Extended Essay draft better.

Ask a teacher that you have experience with through class or an extracurricular activity. Do not ask a teacher that you have absolutely no connection to. If a teacher already knows you, that means they already know your strengths and weaknesses, so they know what to look for, where you need to improve, and how to encourage your best work.

Also, don't forget that your supervisor's assessment is part of your overall EE score . If you're meeting with someone who pushes you to do better—and you actually take their advice—they'll have more impressive things to say about you than a supervisor who doesn't know you well and isn't heavily involved in your research process.

Be aware that the IB only allows advisors to make suggestions and give constructive criticism. Your teacher cannot actually help you write your EE. The IB recommends that the supervisor spends approximately two to three hours in total with the candidate discussing the EE.

#5: Make Sure Your Essay Has a Clear Structure and Flow

The IB likes structure. Your EE needs a clear introduction (which should be one to two double-spaced pages), research question/focus (i.e., what you're investigating), a body, and a conclusion (about one double-spaced page). An essay with unclear organization will be graded poorly.

The body of your EE should make up the bulk of the essay. It should be about eight to 18 pages long (again, depending on your topic). Your body can be split into multiple parts. For example, if you were doing a comparison, you might have one third of your body as Novel A Analysis, another third as Novel B Analysis, and the final third as your comparison of Novels A and B.

If you're conducting an experiment or analyzing data, such as in this EE , your EE body should have a clear structure that aligns with the scientific method ; you should state the research question, discuss your method, present the data, analyze the data, explain any uncertainties, and draw a conclusion and/or evaluate the success of the experiment.

#6: Start Writing Sooner Rather Than Later!

You will not be able to crank out a 4,000-word essay in just a week and get an A on it. You'll be reading many, many articles (and, depending on your topic, possibly books and plays as well!). As such, it's imperative that you start your research as soon as possible.

Each school has a slightly different deadline for the Extended Essay. Some schools want them as soon as November of your senior year; others will take them as late as February. Your school will tell you what your deadline is. If they haven't mentioned it by February of your junior year, ask your IB coordinator about it.

Some high schools will provide you with a timeline of when you need to come up with a topic, when you need to meet with your advisor, and when certain drafts are due. Not all schools do this. Ask your IB coordinator if you are unsure whether you are on a specific timeline.

Below is my recommended EE timeline. While it's earlier than most schools, it'll save you a ton of heartache (trust me, I remember how hard this process was!):

January/February of Junior Year: Come up with your final research topic (or at least your top three options).
February of Junior Year: Approach a teacher about being your EE advisor. If they decline, keep asking others until you find one. See my notes above on how to pick an EE advisor.
April/May of Junior Year: Submit an outline of your EE and a bibliography of potential research sources (I recommend at least seven to 10) to your EE advisor. Meet with your EE advisor to discuss your outline.
Summer Between Junior and Senior Year: Complete your first full draft over the summer between your junior and senior year. I know, I know—no one wants to work during the summer, but trust me—this will save you so much stress come fall when you are busy with college applications and other internal assessments for your IB classes. You will want to have this first full draft done because you will want to complete a couple of draft cycles as you likely won't be able to get everything you want to say into 4,000 articulate words on the first attempt. Try to get this first draft into the best possible shape so you don't have to work on too many revisions during the school year on top of your homework, college applications, and extracurriculars.
August/September of Senior Year: Turn in your first draft of your EE to your advisor and receive feedback. Work on incorporating their feedback into your essay. If they have a lot of suggestions for improvement, ask if they will read one more draft before the final draft.
September/October of Senior Year: Submit the second draft of your EE to your advisor (if necessary) and look at their feedback. Work on creating the best possible final draft.
November-February of Senior Year: Schedule your viva voce. Submit two copies of your final draft to your school to be sent off to the IB. You likely will not get your grade until after you graduate.

Remember that in the middle of these milestones, you'll need to schedule two other reflection sessions with your advisor . (Your teachers will actually take notes on these sessions on a form like this one , which then gets submitted to the IB.)

I recommend doing them when you get feedback on your drafts, but these meetings will ultimately be up to your supervisor. Just don't forget to do them!

The early bird DOES get the worm!

How Is the IB Extended Essay Graded?

Extended Essays are graded by examiners appointed by the IB on a scale of 0 to 34 . You'll be graded on five criteria, each with its own set of points. You can learn more about how EE scoring works by reading the IB guide to extended essays .

Criterion A: Focus and Method (6 points maximum)
Criterion B: Knowledge and Understanding (6 points maximum)
Criterion C: Critical Thinking (12 points maximum)
Criterion D: Presentation (4 points maximum)
Criterion E: Engagement (6 points maximum)

How well you do on each of these criteria will determine the final letter grade you get for your EE. You must earn at least a D to be eligible to receive your IB Diploma.

Although each criterion has a point value, the IB explicitly states that graders are not converting point totals into grades; instead, they're using qualitative grade descriptors to determine the final grade of your Extended Essay . Grade descriptors are on pages 102-103 of this document .

Here's a rough estimate of how these different point values translate to letter grades based on previous scoring methods for the EE. This is just an estimate —you should read and understand the grade descriptors so you know exactly what the scorers are looking for.

Here is the breakdown of EE scores (from the May 2021 bulletin):

How Does the Extended Essay Grade Affect Your IB Diploma?

The Extended Essay grade is combined with your TOK (Theory of Knowledge) grade to determine how many points you get toward your IB Diploma.

To learn about Theory of Knowledge or how many points you need to receive an IB Diploma, read our complete guide to the IB program and our guide to the IB Diploma requirements .

This diagram shows how the two scores are combined to determine how many points you receive for your IB diploma (3 being the most, 0 being the least). In order to get your IB Diploma, you have to earn 24 points across both categories (the TOK and EE). The highest score anyone can earn is 45 points.

Let's say you get an A on your EE and a B on TOK. You will get 3 points toward your Diploma. As of 2014, a student who scores an E on either the extended essay or TOK essay will not be eligible to receive an IB Diploma .

Prior to the class of 2010, a Diploma candidate could receive a failing grade in either the Extended Essay or Theory of Knowledge and still be awarded a Diploma, but this is no longer true.

Figuring out how you're assessed can be a little tricky. Luckily, the IB breaks everything down here in this document . (The assessment information begins on page 219.)

40+ Sample Extended Essays for the IB Diploma Programme

In case you want a little more guidance on how to get an A on your EE, here are over 40 excellent (grade A) sample extended essays for your reading pleasure. Essays are grouped by IB subject.

Business Management 1
Chemistry 1
Chemistry 2
Chemistry 3
Chemistry 4
Chemistry 5
Chemistry 6
Chemistry 7
Computer Science 1
Economics 1
Design Technology 1
Design Technology 2
Environmental Systems and Societies 1
Geography 1
Geography 2
Geography 3
Geography 4
Geography 5
Geography 6
Literature and Performance 1
Mathematics 1
Mathematics 2
Mathematics 3
Mathematics 4
Mathematics 5
Philosophy 1
Philosophy 2
Philosophy 3
Philosophy 4
Philosophy 5
Psychology 1
Psychology 2
Psychology 3
Psychology 4
Psychology 5
Social and Cultural Anthropology 1
Social and Cultural Anthropology 2
Social and Cultural Anthropology 3
Sports, Exercise and Health Science 1
Sports, Exercise and Health Science 2
Visual Arts 1
Visual Arts 2
Visual Arts 3
Visual Arts 4
Visual Arts 5
World Religion 1
World Religion 2
World Religion 3

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As an SAT/ACT tutor, Dora has guided many students to test prep success. She loves watching students succeed and is committed to helping you get there. Dora received a full-tuition merit based scholarship to University of Southern California. She graduated magna cum laude and scored in the 99th percentile on the ACT. She is also passionate about acting, writing, and photography.

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Improving the Written Expression of Children with ASD

By: Kristie Asaro-Saddler, PhD University at Albany
January 1st, 2013
children , students , writing
12671 1

Writing has become an increasingly important element across curricular areas. However, many young children, including children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), struggle with this key literacy skill. While it has been well-documented that many children with ASD have handwriting deficits, difficulties in the writing process, including planning, content generation, and revising text, are also pervasive. Therefore, it is essential to examine the writing of children with ASD, determine how their characteristics impact their writing ability, and discuss how parents and teachers may foster improvement in writing outcomes.

Writing is a foundational skill that can support and extend student learning across the curriculum. It allows the sharing of opinions, the demonstration of critical thinking skills, and the display of content knowledge. Writing is critical for school success, as it is the primary means by which students demonstrate their knowledge in school, and the major instrument that teachers use to evaluate academic performance (Graham & Harris, 2005). Beyond school, students need to be able to write well to succeed in society and to obtain and maintain employment.

Writing presents a unique challenge, as it requires putting thoughts on paper in such a way as to transmit a message to another person who may not have knowledge of what you are writing. While developing these thoughts, writers must coordinate the processes of planning, text production, and revision, while also self-monitoring their work. In addition, they must consider the conventions of the language, and the constraints of the topic and the genre, along with the audience needs and perspectives.

Why Writing is Difficult for Children with ASD

Deficits in writing have been well-documented in ASD research. In one study (Mayes & Calhoun, 2008), for example, 63% of students diagnosed with ASD also exhibited a writing disability. It can be difficult for these students to think of ideas, organize their writing, and physically write their ideas. So what is it that makes writing so difficult for children with ASD?

Children with ASD characteristically exhibit a range of impairments that make written expression difficult. Among these characteristics are:

An inability to use imagination, engage in abstract thinking, consider perspectives of others, and imagine future events or possible scenarios (Harbinson & Alexander, 2009; Myles, 2005; Myles & Simpson, 2001). These characteristics can lead to a literal interpretation of a writing task and an inability to comprehend or use metaphors, idioms, or rhetorical questions, and may hinder the exploration of counter-arguments and various perspectives.
Deficits in theory of mind, or the ability to take another’s perspective or believe that others think differently from you (McCoy, 2011), which makes it difficult for students with ASD to recognize that their work will be read by someone else with different views and opinions. This unawareness of an “absent audience” may result in writings that are not well-developed, or that lack elaboration.
Weak central coherence, or a tendency to focus on small details, which can lead to an inability to understand context or see the “big picture,” causing difficulty with distinguishing important from unimportant details.
Deficits in the areas of language and communication, which make compiling, expressing, and recording thoughts a challenge, resulting in a composition that lacks a clear, central focus, or that is poorly organized.
Motor/coordination issues that can contribute to difficulty with handwriting and composing, resulting in brief writings that students are unwilling to revise or elaborate because it is physically “too difficult.”
Deficits in several executive function components, including planning, cognitive flexibility, inhibition, and self-monitoring (Hill, 2004), which directly impact an individual’s ability to maintaining his/her focus on the process of developing a main idea and details to support the topic, and to encourage engagement and continuous motivation throughout the writing process.

How Can You Help?

There are several steps that parents and teachers can take to help students with ASD improve their writing skills and allow them to be more successful in school and in their everyday functioning. Here are five simple tips that you can use to help increase the motivation and written performance of children with ASD:

Make the environment conducive to writing. The home or classroom environment can impact a child’s willingness to write. Be sure that the lighting and noise level are acceptable for your child, given his/her sensory needs. Surround the child in a print-rich environment by posting model letters, book reviews, and other types of writing around the home or classroom. Teachers and parents may also consider providing alternatives to the typical pencil and paper. Vary writing implements to include items such as markers, stamps, stickers and magnetic letters, and allow students to work in a comfortable setting for them, as long as it is appropriate for writing (i.e. has a flat surface).

Create an audience and purpose. Since deficits in theory of mind my impact children with ASD’s ability to write for an absent audience, it is helpful to create an audience for them. It is beneficial for students to know before beginning the writing process that there will be an authentic audience, besides just their parent or teacher, viewing their writing. Different genres of writing offer different options of potential audiences. For example, persuasive letters can be written to a principal, a parent, or the head of a company, whereas fictional stories can be written and shared with younger siblings or students in younger grades. Online blogs for people with ASD provide a natural context for writing, in addition to social and emotional support, and may be used by young adults with ASD and younger students who are supervised by parents or teachers.

Use interests and fascination . In school, students must eventually learn to write in response to a prompt their teacher gives them. However, in order to increase students’ motivation and fluency with writing, it may help to allow them to start writing about things in which they are interested. These are topics in which children usually have a desire to share information, along with a great deal of background knowledge. For example, a child with ASD who has an interest in digital cameras may write a “how-to” piece about how to take a picture with a digital camera, or a child with a fascination with trains may write a persuasive piece on why trains are a better method of transportation than cars.

Provide supports. Students with ASD may require various types of supports in the classroom or at home. Graphic organizers and semantic maps (visual tools designed to organize thoughts and represent relationships between them) may aid in the planning process (Sansoti, Powell-Smith & Cohan, 2010). Framed paragraphs, which are partially completed paragraphs with a number of blanks strategically placed for the student to fill in, may also be used to scaffold students’ writing (Kluth & Chandler-Olcott, 2008), along with word banks or drawings/pictures (Hillock, 2011) and story starters, which provide a statement to start the story, such as, “I went for a walk in the woods and I found…” that the student has to continue. Siblings or other students in the class can also act as a support for children with ASD through scribing (writing down what the student says aloud) or shared writing, where students take turns making a contribution to the written product. Peers can also help students with the revising process after their first drafts have been completed.

Use technology. Sometimes the physical act of writing makes it difficult for children with ASD to create written products. Allowing the students to use a keyboard or speech-to-text software may reduce the physical burden and allow students to express themselves in another way. Technology can also be used to help children organize their writing. Software programs such as Kidspiration® and Inspiration® and iPad apps such as Popplet™ for example, can be used in the planning stages to help students organize their thoughts before beginning to write.

While writing can be a challenge for many students with ASD, providing support may prove beneficial. The basic tips offered here can help increase students’ motivation to write, resulting in more frequent writing with less resistance, and ultimately, better written products.

Kristie Asaro-Saddler, PhD is Assistant Professor of Special Education at The University at Albany. For more information, please contact Dr. Asaro-Saddler at [email protected] or visit www.albany.edu/special_education .

Graham, S., & Harris, K. R. (2005). Writing better: Teaching writing processes and self-regulation to students with learning problems . Baltimore, MD: Brookes.

Harbinson, H., & Alexander, J. (2009). Asperger Syndrome and the English curriculum: Addressing the challenges. Support for Learning, 24 , 10-17.

Hill, E. L. (2004). Evaluating the theory of executive dysfunction in autism. Developmental Review, 24 , 189-233.

Hillock, J. (2011). Written expression: Why is it difficult and what can be done? In K. McCoy (Ed). Autism from the teacher’s perspective . Denver: Love Publishing Company.

Kluth, P., & Chandler-Olcott, K. (2008). A land we can share . Baltimore: Paul H. Brooks Publishing.

Mayes, S., & Calhoun, S. L. (2008). WISC-IV and WIAT-II profiles in children with high functioning autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 38 , 428–439.

McCoy, K. M. (2011). Autism from the teacher’s perspective: Strategies for classroom instruction. Denver: Love Publishing Co.

Myles, B. S. (2005). Children and youth with Asperger syndrome . Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Myles, B. S., & Simpson, R. L. (2001) Effective practices for students with Asperger Syndrome. Focus on Exceptional Children, 34 , 1-14.

Sansoti, F., Powell-Smith, K., & Cohan, R. (2010). High-functioning Autism/Asperger syndrome in schools: Assessment and intervention . New York: Guilford Press

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Reading and writing skills in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder without intellectual disability.

1 Occupational Sciences, Speech Language Therapy, Developmental and Educational Psychology Department, Catholic University of Valencia, Campus Capacitas, Valencia, Spain
2 Developmental and Educational Psychology, University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain
3 Neuropediatrics Section, Hospital la Fe de Valencia, Valencia, Spain

The purpose of this study is to extend the knowledge about academic achievement in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). To this end, first, we analyzed differences in a wide range of reading and writing skills in adolescents with ASD without intellectual disability (ASD-WID) and adolescents with typical development (TD). Second, these two groups were compared on academic outcomes in core subjects and indicators of successful transition to secondary school. Third, the potential contribution of literacy skills to academic outcomes was examined in the two groups. Participants were 56 adolescents between 12 and 14 years old, 30 with ASD-WID and 26 with TD. Results showed no significant differences between the two groups on measures of reading fluency or literal and inferential comprehension. However, the performance of the group with ASD was significantly lower on reading comprehension processes that assess cognitive flexibility. Regarding their written expression skills, significant differences were observed between the group with ASD and the group with TD on most of the indicators analyzed as: productivity, lexical diversity, and overall coherence (resolution component). In addition, findings showed that the deficits in reading and writing observed in the adolescents with ASD significantly affected their academic achievement, which was lower than that of their peers with TD and below what would be expected based on their intellectual capacity. Moreover, their families’ perceptions of the transition to high school reflected worse adjustment and lower self-esteem, confidence, and motivation.

Introduction

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by persistent difficulties in communication and social interactions, along with restricted interests and the presence of repetitive behaviors ( American Psychiatric Association, 2013 ). A key factor in the development of people with ASD is academic achievement, which undoubtedly contributes to access to employment opportunities and independent living. The inclusion of students with ASD in regular classrooms is a growing reality, and so it is necessary to analyze the factors that influence their educational performance.

Despite the relevance of this topic, research on the academic profile of students with ASD is limited, particularly in the adolescent stage or during the transition to secondary school. This is a complex period when important developmental changes occur, and it is characterized by greater academic and social demands. The inherent characteristics of ASD, such as difficulties in social communication, resistance to change, sensory hypersensitivity, or intolerance to uncertainty, make these students a particularly vulnerable population in this developmental period. In fact, anxiety, social pressure, and bullying have been found to be significant challenges for adolescents with ASD ( Nuske et al., 2018 ), who report negative experiences in this academic transition phase ( Makin et al., 2017 ). Therefore, identifying the variables that influence school performance and contribute to successful transition to secondary school should be a major research objective.

To date, studies that have attempted to analyze the academic performance of students with ASD have generally referred a variable performance, which is consistent with the disorder’s heterogeneity ( Keen et al., 2016 ). To account for this variability, studies have tried to establish different performance profiles in children and adolescents with diverse cognitive abilities. Thus, Wei et al. (2014) identified four distinct profiles based on five measures of academic achievement (word identification, rapid letter naming, passage comprehension, applied problems, and calculation). These profiles were the following: higher-achieving (39%, who have scored around the national average on most of the measures), hyperlexia (9%, who do well on decoding but with poor comprehension), hypercalculia (20%, with scores close to the national average on calculation skills, but significantly below average on the other four dimensions), and lower-achieving (32%, children who scored about two standard deviations below the mean on all five indicators). The higher-achieving and hyperlexia subgroups had significantly better functional cognitive skills and came from higher socioeconomic backgrounds.

Following a similar approach, Chen et al. (2019) , in a sample 7–14 years old participants with ASD with varied intelligence levels, could determine two distinct groups, low-achievement ASD and high-achievement ASD, based on their performance on four measures taken from the WIAT-II ( Weschler, 2001 ): numerical operations, mathematical reasoning, word reading, and reading comprehension. These differences were especially pronounced in the area of mathematics. As in the study by Wei et al. (2014) , the low-achievement subgroup scores were consistent with the intellectual capacity and other cognitive processes, such as working memory.

However, despite the expected relationship between cognitive ability and academic performance, other studies have identified discrepancies in this regard. Jones et al. (2009) found that approximately 70% of adolescents with ASD from 14 to 16 years old with different cognitive levels had a significant divergence between intellectual ability and one or more achievement domains. They described four subgroups in which either word reading (“reading peak” and “reading dip”) or arithmetic (“arithmetic peak” and “arithmetic dip”) was higher or lower than the WASI Full Scale Intelligence Quotient (IQ; Wechsler, 1999 ). Estes et al. (2011) identified these same differences in a sample of 30 children with ASD without intellectual disabilities. In 60% of them, a significantly lower achievement was found than what was predicted by their cognitive ability, in at least one of the domains analyzed (spelling, word reading, or basic number skills).

In conclusion, students with ASD present an irregular performance profile where intelligence plays an important role, although the research is not consistent in this regard. However, it is clear that many children and adolescents with ASD perform below what would be expected based on their intellectual capacity. Therefore, it is necessary to determine the areas of vulnerability and the factors involved in this low performance, in order to plan more appropriate and effective interventions. Certainly, in the school context, reading and writing are crucial instrumental skills and the basis for success in different curricular areas, and they have important implications throughout life, not only academically, but also socially and occupationally.

Reading Difficulties in ASD

Reading is a complex skill involving the orchestration of different components. From an overall perspective, two major processes may be distinguished as: decoding and comprehension. Decoding refers to the transformation of written words (graphemes) into phonological representations. Comprehension processes refer to the extraction of meaning from the written text. Specifically, and according to one of the most known models of reading, the Simple View of Reading Model ( Hoover and Gough, 1990 ), reading comprehension is the product of decoding skills and linguistic comprehension.

Many studies have found that people with ASD without intellectual disabilities (ASD-WID) have strengths in decoding skills, compared to their reading comprehension performance. Thus, in general, students with ASD-WID seem to master mechanisms involved in automatic word recognition, in contrast to their reading comprehension performance ( Jones et al., 2009 ; Norbury and Nation, 2011 ; Solari et al., 2017 ), which is below expectations for their chronological age or reading accuracy level ( Brown et al., 2013 ). To explain this discrepancy, good memory skills have been cited, as well as phonological and visual processing skills, which would contribute to adequate recognition of the written word.

As in the case of academic performance, the variability in reading skills has led studies to identify reading profiles in samples of children and adolescents with ASD. In a longitudinal and retrospective study, Åsberg et al. (2019) were able to determine three subgroups. A first subgroup, with “low reading performance,” which was the most frequent profile (approximately 50% of the participants), had below-average scores on both word reading and text comprehension. A second subgroup, made up of “skilled readers,” performed above average on both reading processes. Finally, the third subgroup was the least common (20%), and it was composed of “hyperlexical/low understanding” participants. Following a similar approach, namely latent profile analysis, McIntyre et al. (2017) found four different profiles in a sample of students with high-functioning autism from 8 to 16 years old: (1) readers with overall disturbance (32.2%), i.e., alterations in the decoding and comprehension processes; (2) readers with severe overall disturbance (14.1%); (3) readers with comprehension problems (20.6%); and (4) average readers (32.1%). In other words, approximately 70% of the participants experienced reading impairments, and of them, the majority had comprehension problems. Other studies using a cluster analysis methodology have also found lower reading comprehension scores than word reading scores, even in high-achieving subgroups of students with ASD ( Chen et al., 2019 ).

To determine the factors moderating reading comprehension performance in students with ASD, Brown et al. (2013) conducted a meta-analysis of 36 studies comparing ASD and control groups. The strongest individual predictors of reading comprehension were semantic knowledge and decoding skills. The study results highlight the contribution of oral language to reading comprehension, as well as the content of the texts, because individuals with ASD were significantly worse at comprehending highly social texts than less social texts.

In sum, decoding skills, language level, and text characteristics and content are variables to take into account when analyzing the reading comprehension difficulties of students with ASD. Other factors to consider are the development of comprehension strategies during reading ( Williamson et al., 2012 ) or the type of comprehension assessed (literal versus inferential) because students with ASD have shown greater difficulty with inferential comprehension processes ( Tirado and Saldaña, 2016 ). In addition to classical predictors, other cognitive factors may help us understand why students with ASD struggle with reading comprehension. Research in typical children has suggested that cognitive flexibility is positively associated with reading ( Yeniad et al., 2013 ). Cognitive flexibility requires the interaction of several mechanisms (attention shifting, conflict monitoring, and perception) that respond to specific environmental demands, such as rule changes, in order to achieve flexible behavior and to solve the problem in a new way ( Ionescu, 2012 ). Precisely, cognitive flexibility is one of the most significant affected executive function in the majority of children and adolescents with high-functioning ASD ( Lai et al., 2017 ). Therefore, it seems logical to expect that they have difficulties in deploying flexible strategies for accomplishing reading tasks.

Writing Difficulties in ASD

Similar to reading ability, good writing skills are crucial to academic and professional success. In addition, with the growing prevalence of online communication and social networks, the written expression has become a common means of daily interaction between people. Writing represents a major challenge for students with ASD. According to data provided by Mayes and Calhoun (2006) , -in a study with children and adolescents with heterogeneous IQ levels-, approximately 60% of students with ASD present some type of specific difficulty in learning to write.

Most of our understanding of the writing process has been based on the recursive and multi-layered model developed by Hayes and Flower (1980) and Hayes (2006) , which is composed of three main processes: (1) the planning process , directed to prepare the content of the text by retrieving ideas from memory and organizing them; (2) the translation process , which includes the grammatical and orthographical encoding, and the motor execution actions involved in handwriting; and (3) the revision process that allows writers to compare the written product with their mental representation of the intended text. Research on writing difficulties in ASD has mainly focused on the planning and translation processes. A meta-analysis found significantly worse performance of ASD students on several components of writing, related to the translation process (length, legibility, size, speed, and spelling) and to some indicators of the planning process, such as text structure ( Finnegan and Accardo, 2018 ). Likewise, a more recent study has demonstrated that children with ASD-WID write personal narrative texts that obtain lower ratings in holistic assessments of coherence, structure, and content, and have less lexical and syntactic complexity, in comparison with children with TD ( Hilvert et al., 2020 ). Moreover, fine motor and visuomotor speed problems ( Kushki et al., 2011 ) may often result in illegible or brief writing ( Fuentes et al., 2009 ).

Written expression difficulties of students with ASD have been found not only in narrative discourse, but also in expository and persuasive texts ( Brown et al., 2014 ; Price et al., 2020 ). In addition, their essays contain more grammatical errors and present less syntactic diversity and complexity, although they can achieve a lexical richness and coherence comparable to their peers with TD ( Hilvert et al., 2019 ).

In summary, variability is the trait that characterizes the academic performance and reading and writing abilities of students with ASD, which is linked to variables, such as intellectual ability, language level, the type of processes involved, and the characteristics of the tasks used to assess reading and writing. In any case, as students progress through the education system, there is a greater emphasis upon reading comprehension and writing expression which gives students access to school curriculum with more autonomy. The transition from primary to secondary school is one important and educational challenge. Research about the experience of young people with autism has identified a number of areas in which they may experience particular concerns compared to their TD peers, including structural/organizational and social demands. Secondary schools tend to be large, with different teachers for different subjects that students need to adapt to Maras and Aveling, (2006) . Furthermore, social complexity about forming relationships with a new peer group increases anxieties as well as academic demands of independence ( Tobin et al., 2012 ; Mandy et al., 2016 ). Our research focuses on the period of adolescence, a stage less studied in the literature, in particular, in the transition from primary to secondary school, an especially demanding challenge for individuals with ASD. Therefore, a measure of transition to secondary education of individuals with ASD without ID was included.

Consequently, the present study seeks to advance the knowledge about the reading and writing performance of students with ASD in several ways. First, there is a paucity of research on studying the relationships between reading and skills and school achievement in individuals with ASD. Second, it is carried out in Spanish, a language with a transparent spelling characterized by a series of phonological and orthographical specificities that can impact psycholinguistic processing. Third, different comprehension processes (literal and inferential) are considered, using, in addition, a reading-specific measure that requires cognitive flexibility. To the best of our knowledge, this measure has not been employed in the previous investigations assessing reading comprehension in ASD. Based on these considerations, the following objectives were addressed as follows:

1. to analyze differences in a wide range of reading and writing skills between adolescents with ASD-WID and adolescents with TD;

2. to analyze differences in academic outcomes in core subjects and on indicators of successful transition to secondary school between adolescents with ASD-WID and adolescents with TD; and

3. to explore the potential contribution of reading and writing skills to academic outcomes in both groups, adolescents with ASD-WID and TD.

According to the literature review, it is expected to find similar results in both groups in reading accuracy and fluency. However, significant lower results are hypothesized in participants with ASD-WID regarding indicators of written expression and reading comprehension tasks tapping inferential and cognitive flexibility processes. Likewise, it is predicted that participants with ASD will obtain lower academic outcomes, as well as worse results in indicators of successful transition to secondary education. Given the prominent role that reading and writing play on school outcomes, it is anticipated that both instrumental skills will have a considerable weight in academic performance, both in the group with TD and in the group with ASD-WID.

Materials and Methods

Participants.

The present study included 56 adolescents between 12 and 14 years old, of whom 30 were adolescents with ASD-WID (28 males) and 26 were adolescents with typical development (TD; 17 males). The participants had an intellectual functioning within the limits of normality on the K-BIT ( Kaufman and Kaufman, 2000 ).

The group of adolescents with ASD-WID had received a previous clinical diagnosis of an autism spectrum condition by the Psychiatry and Child Neurology services in hospitals and medical centers in the Valencian community at ages ranging between 2 years and 11 months and 6 years old. According to the protocol for the ASD diagnosis, the criteria for ASD from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders fourth edition (DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 1994 ), the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R; Rutter et al., 2006 ), and/or the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule-WPS (ADOS-WPS; Lord et al., 1999 ) were administered by a multidisciplinary team. In order to confirm the ASD diagnosis for the present study, the Social Communication Questionnaire ( Rutter et al., 2003 ) and the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R; Rutter et al., 2006 ) were administered, taking into account the recommended cutoff points. The results appear in Table 1 . These two instruments were administered to the parents by a clinical psychologist from the research team who had been accredited in their application. Likewise, all the adolescents met the strict diagnostic criteria for ASD from the fifth edition of the DSM-5 ( American Psychiatric Association, 2013 ), based on information provided by teachers and parents. Both informants, in interviews with a clinical psychologist, rated the severity of the criteria in the two ASD dimensions on scales ranging from 0 to 3 points (0 represents “almost never,” 1 represents “sometimes,” 2 represents “often,” and 3 represents “many times”).

Table 1 . Socio-demographic characteristics.

The majority of the adolescents with ASD had educational support at school. Specifically, seven adolescents with ASD (23.33%) were attending school in regular classrooms full time without educational support; nine adolescents (30.00%) attended regular classrooms but received educational support for their specific needs in the high school; and finally, 14 adolescents (46.66%) were placed in the communication and language classroom modality. Furthermore, 11 (36.66%) adolescents with ASD were taking antipsychotic medication (mostly risperidone) for behavioral problems.

The typically developing adolescents had no history of psychopathology or referral to pediatric mental health units (USMI), according to the information found in the school records, and they did not meet DSM-5 criteria for ASD on the screening carried out before beginning the evaluation. None of them were taking any psychoactive medication.

The exclusion criteria for the adolescents who participated in this study were evaluated through an extensive anamnesis carried out with the families. They included neurological or genetic diseases, brain lesions, sensory, auditory, or motor deficits, and an IQ below 80 (see Table 1 ).

The assessment measures were selected based on the objectives of this study. In addition, criteria, such as the psychometric properties of the measures, were taken into account, as well as their translation and adaptation to Spanish.

Reading Skills

The assessment of lexical and semantic reading processes was carried out through two tasks from the PROLEC-SE battery ( Evaluation of Reading Processes for Secondary Education Students ; Ramos and Cuetos, 1999 ). Furthermore, a subtest of the TLC Test ( Leer para Comprender; Reading for understanding ) was also administered ( Abusamra et al., 2010 ).

Lexical Processes Measures

Reading accuracy and reading fluency were assessed through the reading of 40 Spanish words that vary in length, frequency of use, and the complexity of their syllabic structure (i.e., high and low frequency, short and long words). The total accuracy score is obtained by adding up the words read correctly. To obtain the reading speed score, the time spent reading the complete list of 40 words is recorded. In our study reliability index of this measure, Cronbach’s alpha is 0.74.

Reading Comprehension Measures

Semantic processes were assessed using one of the tasks proposed in the semantic block of the PROLEC-SE battery. The task required silently reading two expository texts: “The Eskimos” and “The Australian Papuans.” After each text is read silently, the text is removed, and the participant has to answer 10 questions. Five questions are literal and can be answered from memory and five questions are inferential; that is, they can only be answered if the participant has understood the text and can make the appropriate inferences. Each correct answer receives 1 point. The total score is obtained by adding up the total number of correct answers on each text.

In this research, we use the direct scores. High direct scores on reading accuracy and comprehension and low scores on reading speed indicate better reading performance. The psychometric properties of the PROLEC-SE battery are adequate. For the reliability index, Cronbach’s alpha is 0.84 ( Ramos and Cuetos, 1999 ). In this study, α coefficients for the subscales used were 0.63 (literal comprehension), 0.68 (inferential comprehension), and 0.73 (total comprehension).

Moreover, to assess cognitive flexibility in the reading comprehension process, the “Mental flexibility” subtest from the Read to Understand Test (TLC) was administered ( Abusamra et al., 2010 ). In this subtest, instructions are given that involve different ways to approach the reading of a text, and, subsequently, the reader’s awareness of the strategies used is evaluated. Therefore, part of the evaluation is declarative because the student “tells what s/he does” to solve the task. This test assesses, for example, whether the student knows that, in some cases, a superficial understanding of the text is possible (specifically, on tasks, such as searching for five nouns in a paragraph), whereas in other cases, a deeper understanding is necessary. That is, it is not always necessary to pay attention to the meaning of words, sentences, and paragraphs in order to perform certain activities that focus exclusively on grammatical, syntactic, or stylistic aspects, or when searching for a specific piece of information. This test evaluates this type of metacognitive process, which is related to cognitive flexibility, that is, the ability to focus on the reading comprehension process by selecting appropriate strategies. This aspect of metacognition is defined as the ability to cope with a task by selecting the right strategies and modifying cognitive processes in response to changes: to shift attentional focus, select information to guide and choose necessary responses, form plans, and generate monitoring ( Abusamra et al., 2010 ). The test has psychometric properties, such as concurrent validity and internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha of 0.79). α coefficient for this test in our sample is 0.66.

Written Expression

To obtain the spontaneous writing sample, the “Birthday” sheet from the Test of Written Language, fourth edition, was used (TOWL-4; Hammill and Larsen, 2009 ). The participants were given a blank sheet of paper and a pen and the following instruction: “Write a story about the events and activities shown in the picture.” They were given as much time as necessary to complete the written compositions, which were then transcribed using the Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT; Miller and Iglesias, 2010 ). All the texts were coded on variables that assessed productivity, syntactic complexity, and overall coherence. An independent research assistant was trained in the measures coding during two sessions in a seminar of 5 h. In these sessions, the variables considered were defined and explained and the analysis was practiced on written samples. The research assistant was blind to the goal of the study and did not know the membership group of the texts (ASD or TD). For the reliability check, after the training sessions, the evaluators analyzed approximately 80% of the writings from each group (40 in all), which were randomly selected.

Productivity

Children’s productivity, or fluency, was measured as the total number of words in the text. Automated SALT analyses provided information about this variable.

Syntactic Complexity

Syntactic complexity was measured as the diversity of complex syntax ( Hilvert et al., 2019 ). This variable was determined by counting the number of different types of complex syntactic devices employed within the text: substantive subordinate clauses, adverbial subordinate clauses, relative subordinate clauses, and coordinated clauses. For the presence of each type of syntactic relationship, 1 point was awarded, with a maximum score of 4. In order to calculate inter-rater reliability, the formula proposed by Sackett (1978) was used (number of agreements divided by the number of agreements plus disagreements, x 100). The agreement was 90% for the substantive subordinate clauses, 100% for the adverbial subordinate clauses, 100% for the relative subordinate clauses, and 100% for the coordinated clauses. All disagreements were resolved by discussion.

Global Coherence

To assess the overall coherence of the compositions, the coding system proposed by Barnes and Baron-Cohen (2012) was followed. This system is specially addressed to capture how the story components are included. In this way, it can be identified if there is a cognitive style focused on details at the expense of globality, as the weak central coherence theory states. Thus, the texts were coded on a scale from 0 to 2 for each of the four different elements of the story: (1) setting (where the story takes place); (2) character (who the story is about); (3) conflict (what the story is about); and (4) resolution (how the story ends).

A score of 0 indicates that no information is provided about the element in question; a score of 1 indicates that the composition provides one or more details about the element, but the overall idea of the scene is not captured; and a score of 2 indicates that the narrative provides a well-founded and fully developed view of the corresponding element. With regard to the characters, a score of 0 is awarded if either of the story’s characters is not mentioned, and 1 point if the characters are mentioned, but without defining their relationship to each other or their role in the scene. For conflict, a score of 0 is assigned if the character’s desires or goals are not identified; a score of 1 if a character is defined as wanting something, but without mentioning an obstacle to that goal; and a score of 2 if both a goal and an obstacle to the character achieving that goal are established. Finally, in relation to the resolution component, 0 points are assigned when what happened at the end of the conflict is not mentioned; 1 point if an action that took place at the end of the scene is mentioned; and 2 points if an ending action is described and that action is linked to the overall theme of the scene.

According to the formula proposed by Sackett (1978) , the inter-rater reliability of these measures was as follows: in the case of the setting, 100% agreement was reached; for character, 100% agreement; for conflict, 97% agreement; and for resolution, 98% agreement. All disagreements were resolved by discussion.

Academic Results

Academic results were reported by parents and/or primary caregivers from the last math, language, and social science evaluation. The numerical range used in the Spanish educational system is from 0 to 10, where 0 is the minimum academic grade and 10 is the maximum.

Transition to Secondary Education

Parents filled out a questionnaire derived from a large scale, national transitions study, the Effective Preschool, Primary, and Secondary Education (EPPSE) transitions substudy ( Evangelou et al., 2008 ), used in Makin et al. (2017) to provide an index of “transition success.” Evangelou et al. (2008) defined “successful transition” as a multidimensional construct composed of five underlying factors: developing friendships and confidence, settling into school life, showing a growing interest in school and work, getting used to new routines, and experiencing curriculum continuity.

Parents had to answer six questions related to three of the five factors. Regarding the “developing friendships and confidence” dimension, parents were asked whether, compared to the last year in primary school, their child has more (3 points), the same number (2 points), or fewer (1 point) school friends, as well as more, the same, or less self-esteem, confidence, and motivation. The same scoring system was used in the “experiencing curriculum continuity” dimension, which was assessed by asking parents whether, compared to the last year in primary school, their child shows more, the same, or less interest in school and schoolwork. Regarding the adaptation to school life, parents were asked how they thought their child had settled in (very well, 4 points; quite well, 3 points; not very well, 2 points; and not well at all, 1 point). They were also asked how satisfied they were with the whole process of their child’s transition to secondary school (from very satisfied, 4 points and to not at all satisfied, 1 point), how they felt when their child first moved on to secondary school, and how they feel now (from not at all concerned, 4 points and to very concerned, 1 point). The index of internal consistency Cronbach’s alpha for this questionnaire in our sample is 0.91.

This research was performed in accordance with the ethical standards of the Research Ethics Committee of the University of Valencia, which is regulated by the Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects (Declaration of Helsinki 1964; World Medical Association General Assembly, 2013 ). Likewise, the authors received authorization from the Board of Education of the Valencian Government to access the schools and locate the participants.

The evaluation was carried out in the high schools where the adolescents were enrolled, in specially prepared spaces that met optimal conditions for psychoeducational assessment. The informed oral and written consent of the parents of all the participants was also obtained after informing them about the research proposal. The different measures were administered to all the adolescents individually by trained examiners. The parents (mostly mothers) provided information about the adolescent’s transition to secondary education, ASD symptoms, and socio-demographic data.

Data Analyses

This paper presents a descriptive cross-sectional study of comparison between a group of adolescents with ASD and a group of adolescents with typical development.

The statistical analyses were performed with the statistical program for the social sciences SPSS v 26.0 (SPSS). Preliminary analyses checked all data for multicollinearity and multivariate outliers. The asymmetry and kurtosis data indicate that most of the variables followed a normal distribution (all values between −1 and 1). Variables that did not show a normal distribution were transformed using square-root transformation (coherence setting and coherence character). To compare the reading/writing skill, academic results, and successful transition to secondary school of ASD-WID and TD, Multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) was used. The data set was examined for violations of essential assumptions associated with the application of MANCOVA. Pearson correlations between all dependent variables pairs and dependent variable-covariate pairs suggested statistically significant linear relationships.

Adolescents’ IQ, vocabulary, and parents’ educational level were included as covariates due to its potential effect on reading and writing abilities and academic outcomes in general. Likewise, the differences between math, language, and social sciences academic outcomes were explored, as well as the differences regarding the transition to secondary education in adolescents with TD and with ASD-WID. Both academic outcomes and parents perceptions about the successful adaptation to secondary education form part of the academic curriculum, which encompasses different interrelated dimensions.

For the ANCOVAs, Bonferroni correction was applied to establish the significance level. The proportion of total variance accounted for by the independent variables was calculated using partial eta squared (according to Cohen (1988) : eta squared, 0.06 = small; 0.06–0.14 = medium; and 0.14 = large). To compare academic results and successful transition to secondary school of ASD-WID and TD, t -student was used. Moreover, two partial correlations, controlling for parents’ educational level and adolescents’ IQ and vocabulary, were conducted to examine the relationships between reading and writing skills and academic outcomes in both groups. Finally, multiple linear regression analyses were conducted to test the effect of reading and writing skills on the transition to secondary school and academic outcomes in adolescents with ASD-WID.

Differences in Reading and Writing Skills Between Adolescents With ASD-WID and Adolescents With TD

The MANCOVA between the ASD-WID and TD groups with the different reading skill scores (accuracy, speed, reading comprehension, and reading comprehension related to mental flexibility), controlling for parents’ educational level, IQ, and vocabulary, was statistically significant [Wilks’ Lambda (Λ) = 0.70, F 6,46 = 3.21, p = 0.01, η p 2 = 0.30 ]. Likewise, to calculate the additional ANCOVAs, a significance level of p < 0.008 was established, after applying the Bonferroni correction, and the value of η p 2 was calculated to check the strength of the association. Specifically, statistically significant differences were found on the reading comprehension “Mental flexibility” subtest (F 1,51 = 14.6; p < 0.01; η p 2 = 0.22 ). In addition, scores for accuracy (word reading), speed, and reading comprehension did not reach the required level of statistical significance between the group with TD and the group with ASD-ID ( Table 2 ).

Table 2 . Means, standard deviations (SD) of reading and writing skills, and statistically significant differences between ASD and TD adolescents.

The MANCOVA between the ASD-WID and TD groups with the different writing skill scores (productivity, syntactic complexity, and coherence), controlling for parents’ educational level, IQ, and vocabulary, was statistically significant [Wilks’ Lambda (Λ) = 0.71, F 6,46 = 3.02, p = 0.014, η p 2 = 0.28 ]. Likewise, to calculate the additional ANCOVAs, a significance level of p < 0.008 was established, after applying the Bonferroni correction, and the value of η p 2 was calculated to check the strength of the association. Specifically, statistically significant differences were found in word productivity (F 1,51 = 7.78; p = 0.007; η p 2 = 0.23 ), Syntactic complexity (F 1,51 = 13.4; p = 0.001; η p 2 = 0.21 ), and Coherence (conflict resolution component; F 1,51 = 7.63; p = 0.007; η p 2 = 0.13 ; see Table 2 ).

Differences in Academic Outcomes and Transition to Secondary School Between Adolescents With ASD-WID and Adolescents With TD

The MANCOVA between the ASD-WID and TD groups with the different academic outcome scores (language, math, and social sciences) and the transition to the secondary stage was statistically significant [Wilks’ Lambda (Λ) = 0.71, F 6,46 = 3.02, p = 0.014, η p 2 = 0.28 ]. Statistically significant differences were found in language (F 1,51 = 7.78; p = 0.007; η p 2 = 0.23 ), mathematics (F 1,51 = 13.4; p = 0.001; η p 2 = 0.21 ), social sciences (F 1,51 = 7.63; p = 0.007; η p 2 = 0.13 ), and the index of successful transition to secondary education (F 1,51 = 7.63; p = 0.007; η p 2 = 0.13 ; see Table 3 ).

Table 3 . Means, standard deviations (SD) of academic results and successful transition to secondary, and statistically significant differences between ASD and TD adolescents.

Contribution of Reading and Writing Skills to the Academic Outcomes of Adolescents With ASD-ID and Adolescents With TD

Likewise, two partial correlations were performed, using the covariates of parents’ vocabulary, IQ, and educational level, to analyze the association between the reading and writing variables that showed significant differences between the ASD-WID and TD groups and the learning outcomes in the subjects of the Spanish language, mathematics, and social sciences in the ASD-WID and TD groups.

In the group of children with TD, significant positive correlations were observed between the reading comprehension score related to mental flexibility and the scores on language ( r = 0.45; p = 0.029), mathematics ( r = 0.56; p = 0.006), and social sciences ( r = 0.40; p = 0.050). Similarly, significant positive correlations were observed between the productivity subscale and the scores on language ( r = 0.51; p = 0.013) and mathematics ( r = 0.44; p = 0.035).

In the group of children with ASD-WID, significant positive correlations were observed between the reading comprehension score related to mental flexibility and the scores on language ( r = 0.37; p = 0.050) and mathematics ( r = 0.37; p = 0.050). Likewise, significant positive correlations were observed between the social sciences scores and productivity ( r = 0.46; p = 0.015), syntactic complexity ( r = 0.61; p < 0.001), and coherence ( r = 0.42; p = 0.029; see Table 4 ).

Table 4 . Partial correlations between reading/writing skill and academic outcomes.

Finally, multiple regression analyses were carried out in each group in order to evaluate the contribution of reading comprehension related to mental flexibility and writing skills of productivity, syntactic complexity, and coherence to academic outcomes in the core subjects of language, mathematics, and social sciences (see Table 5 ). The regressions carried out with the TD group indicated that the predictors that explained the highest percentage of variance in Spanish language were reading comprehension related to mental flexibility, productivity, and coherence, explaining 51% of the total variance. As for the mathematics outcomes, the results showed that reading comprehension related to mental flexibility and productivity were the significant individual predictors, together explaining 55% of the variance. In social sciences, there were no significant individual or collective predictors.

Table 5 . Multiple regression analysis of reading and writing skills that predict academic outcomes in TD and ASD groups.

The regressions performed with the ASD-WID group indicated that, on the one hand, reading comprehension related to mental flexibility was the single most significant predictor of language and mathematics outcomes, explaining 31 and 24% of the variance, respectively. On the other hand, the predictors that explained the highest percentage of variance in social sciences were syntactic complexity and coherence, explaining 57% of the total variance.

The purpose of this study was to extend the knowledge about academic achievement in adolescents with ASD by addressing various objectives. First, this study analyzed differences in reading and writing performance between adolescents with ASD-WID and adolescents with TD. In terms of reading, no significant differences were found between the two groups on measures of reading fluency (accuracy and speed), which is consistent with most of the research on the topic in languages with opaque orthographies, such as English ( Jones et al., 2009 ).

However, contrary to expectations, our study data failed to show significant differences between participants with ASD-WID and their peers with TD on either literal or inferential reading comprehension. These results contrast with what is commonly reported in the literature, which generally indicates lower reading comprehension competence in individuals with ASD (see meta-analysis by Brown et al., 2013 ). This discrepancy in the findings could be explained by different factors. Firstly, both groups were matched according to vocabulary knowledge which following the Simple View of Reading Model ( Hoover and Gough, 1990 ) is a fundamental factor for reading comprehension. Numerous investigations with children with ASD have exemplified the strong association between reading comprehension and language (see the meta-analysis by Brown et al., 2013 ), which emerges even as one of the strongest predictors of the reading comprehension abilities of these students ( Davidson et al., 2018 ). A second important factor is the type of texts employed in our study. We used two expository texts with little social content that do not require the student to display inferential skills related to Theory of Mind, which is clearly affected in ASD ( Bora and Pantelis, 2016 ). In other words, the reader would not have to apply skills that require taking the perspective of the characters, which, in contrast, would be necessary to understand narrative texts ( Dore et al., 2018 ). In fact, studies have shown that individuals with ASD are significantly worse at comprehending highly social texts than less social texts, such as those employed in this study ( Brown et al., 2013 ). Moreover, and in line with our results on inferential comprehension, experimental studies using eye-tracking techniques have shown that adolescents with ASD are capable of developing inferential comprehension skills that are activated automatically ( Saldaña and Frith, 2007 ; Micai et al., 2017 ), although they may have difficulties on tasks that require them to answer questions that rate this same process ( Tirado and Saldaña, 2016 ). Likewise, another explanation for our discordant results could be found in the composition of the sample, which might consist of students with ASD who have shown strengths in reading performance, both in decoding and comprehension. These profiles have been described in the literature as “skilled readers” ( Åsberg et al., 2019 ) or “average readers” ( McIntyre et al., 2017 ).

However, the results of our study allowed us to identify certain deficient reading comprehension processes in adolescents with ASD, specifically those that require the activation of cognitive flexibility skills and, in particular, metacognitive skills, such as explicitly describing the strategies used when summarizing, detecting the main idea, or giving a title to a text. Thus, significantly lower performance was observed on the reading-specific measure used in this study that requires cognitive flexibility. These results are congruent with the alterations in cognitive flexibility described in ASD. These disturbances have been considered one of its neuropsychological manifestations, although with mixed findings ( Leung and Zakzanis, 2014 ). These outcomes also coincide with the difficulties identified in students with ASD in adapting reading strategies to various reading materials and task demands ( Micai et al., 2019 ). A competent reader must be able to change strategies while reading a text and adapt them to the different objectives and/or requirements presented. Adequate mental flexibility ensures the reader’s active participation in the comprehension process, and its proper functioning facilitates independent learning, which has a great impact on academic performance. Thus, we can see the importance of mastering these processes involved in comprehension and the need to consider this specific area when designing reading intervention programs for individuals with ASD.

In terms of writing skills, as it was hypothesized, the data revealed significant differences between the group with ASD-WID and the group with TD on all the indicators analyzed as: productivity, syntactic diversity, and overall coherence (in the latter case, only in the resolution component). Adolescents with ASD wrote shorter texts with less varied syntactic structures, which is consistent with the results of the previous studies and reviews on the topic ( Dockrell et al., 2014 ; Finnegan and Accardo, 2018 ; Hilvert et al., 2019 ). Unexpectedly, both groups performed similarly on most of the variables used to assess overall coherence (setting, character, and conflict). However, significant differences could be identified in the resolution component; that is, the students with ASD failed to mention what happened at the end of the conflict presented in their stories. These difficulties may affect the overall coherence of the written composition, which is consistent with the tenets of the Weak Central Coherence Theory ( Happé and Frith, 2006 ). According to this theory, people with ASD tend to focus on local or marginal aspects of the information and fail to integrate them into meaningful global representations, in this case, by providing an ending related to the conflict narrated. This cognitive style has also been shown in different studies on written expression in ASD, both in children and adolescents ( Brown et al., 2014 ), as well as in the adult population ( Barnes and Baron-Cohen, 2012 ).

The second objective of this study was to analyze the differences in academic outcomes and the transition to secondary school between adolescents with ASD-WID and adolescents with TD. As it was expected, the results showed statistically significant differences in the academic grades reported by parents and teachers in the language arts, mathematics, and social science subjects, and in the families’ perceptions of the transition to high school. These findings reinforce the idea of a significant gap between cognitive ability and school performance, taking into account that the participants in our study did not present intellectual limitations. This means that students with ASD are not displaying their full academic potential, which is being undermined by various factors, including deficits in certain reading comprehension and written performance measures, as discussed below.

Furthermore, according to parents’ perceptions, a less successful transition process to high school and generally worse adaptation were observed in adolescents with ASD compared to their peers with TD. Families report fewer friends and lower self-esteem, confidence, and motivation. They are less satisfied with the transition process and are concerned about it. These results are consistent with the negative experiences described by parents of children with ASD in this period of educational change, referring to social isolation, bullying, and anxiety in their children ( Humphrey and Lewis, 2008 ). Families experience challenges and stress beyond what would typically be expected ( Dillon and Underwood, 2012 ; Mandy et al., 2016 ; Peters and Brooks, 2016 ). Therefore, as parents also point out, it is essential for secondary schools to understand the nature of autism and the impact it can have on the child and implement the assistance or support students need for a successful transition, optimal academic performance, and social adjustment ( Cremin et al., 2017 ; Tso and Strnadová, 2017 ).

Finally, the third objective of this study was to examine the contribution of reading and writing skills to the academic outcomes of adolescents with ASD-WID. As expected, a significant positive relationship was found (in both the ASD-WID and the TD groups) between the two variables being analyzed. Specifically, in the group with ASD-WID, significant positive associations were observed between the reading comprehension measure specifically tapping cognitive flexibility and the grades earned in the language and mathematics subjects. A similar relationship was found between the grades obtained in social sciences and the written expression indicators considered (productivity, syntactic diversity, and coherence). This association highlights the importance of instrumental skills, such as reading and writing, which have a clear influence on school performance. Specifically, on the one hand, our study data indicate that the reading comprehension task involving cognitive flexibility turned out to be the only significant predictor of the grades obtained in language and mathematics. On the other hand, the predictors that explained the highest percentage of social sciences grades were syntactic complexity and coherence.

The difficulties of these students exhibit in certain processes of reading comprehension and written expression have an impact on their academic outcomes, which should lead to designing interventions that fit their profile of strengths and weaknesses. Several research syntheses have supported the use of strategy instruction in the form of question generation, use of graphic organizers, or making predictions ( El Zein et al., 2014 ; Finnegan and Mazin, 2016 ). More recently, Singh et al. (2020) , in a systematic review of case studies, analyzed the effectiveness of a series of instructional procedures that contributed to improving the reading comprehension performance of students with ASD. They highlighted the use of comprehension-enhancing supports in the form of graphic organizers or visual diagrams, metacognitive strategies, collaborative strategies, such as peer tutoring, and computer-assisted instruction. In terms of writing skills, a recent research synthesis carried out by Accardo et al. (2020) identified several effective instructional practices: self-regulated strategy development, sentence frames, video modeling, Handwriting Without Tears®, and analytic task instruction with systematic prompting and graphic organizers. Some of the variables that improved with the application of these techniques were the number of elements in the text structure and the number of words and sentences. It should be noted that, as in the reading comprehension intervention, the studies reviewed were single case studies, and so research using experimental or quasi-experimental group designs is necessary in order to improve the levels of scientific evidence currently available. Apart from these teaching strategies, education professionals may also consider to adjust the assessment criteria or the mode of assessment for adolescents with ASD.

Likewise, parents’ perspectives on the transition process to secondary school suggest the need for tailored assistance at the time of the student’s move to secondary school. In this regard, Peters and Brooks (2016) show that parents describe a more positive transition when both pre-transition support and ongoing support in the learning and social environments of secondary school are implemented. To this end, a better understanding of the difficulties and strengths of students with ASD in this educational stage, their particular style of processing information, and their strengths and weaknesses in reading and writing skills are essential, due to their strong impact on academic performance.

Limitations

Despite the contributions of these findings, our research has several limitations. First, the relatively small sample size may be hiding some possible significant relationships between the study variables and limiting the possibility to detect small effects. One second limitation, which leads the results to be interpreted with caution, is related to the moderate values of reliability coefficients of the administrated tests. Therefore, future studies should increase the number of participants on a randomized sampling basis and include, apart from psychometric tests, other reading comprehension tasks. The information from criterion-referenced measures could help to design more accurate intervention programs for students with ASD-WID. Third, the mid-range cognitive ability and the gender of the participants with ASD, mostly male, are factors that should be considered, as they may influence the results and affect their generalization to girls or to individuals with ASD with other cognitive levels. In addition, the writing skills of adolescents with ASD were only assessed on a narrative text, and it would have been appropriate to expand the information to persuasive and expository genres. Furthermore, the indicator used to reflect the academic results was the qualification marks of the last evaluation, which may not be representative of the whole academic level of achievement. Finally, our study has a cross-sectional design, and future research should analyze developmental variations in the writing and reading profiles of individuals with ASD.

This research provides an overview of the school performance of adolescents with ASD and the factors involved in it. The results show that adolescents with ASD have strengths in reading-decoding mechanisms, but their performance on reading comprehension processes involving aspects of mental flexibility and writing skills continues to be significantly below expectations. Both deficits contribute significantly to their academic achievement, which is also below that of their peers with TD and what would be expected based on their intellectual capacity, at a medium range in this study. In any case, academic difficulties should be taken into account when analyzing the parents’ opinions in the transition period to secondary school because parents of students with ASD-WID report a more difficult adaptation process compared to students with TD. Consequently, education professionals face the challenge of adapting their teaching style and employing evidence-based teaching strategies that address students’ different needs while enhancing their capabilities. This may be a promising avenue for reducing the gap between the potential and current academic performance of students with ASD.

Data Availability Statement

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

Ethics Statement

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the University of Valencia. Written informed consent to participate in this study was provided by the participants’ legal guardian/next of kin.

Author Contributions

IB, AM, BR, and CB contributed to the design of the work and wrote the manuscript. CB was responsible for the analysis and interpretation of data for the study. BR was responsible for the literature search and assessment of the participants. All authors participated in data interpretation and draft the manuscript and approved the version to be submitted.

This research was financed by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (PSI2016-78109; AEI/FEDER, UE) and by the Generalitat Valenciana (grant no. GV/2020/C/005). The funding body had no role in the study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, or writing of the report or the decision to submit the paper for publication.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the adolescents, parents, and teachers who participated in this study.

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Keywords: autism, reading, writing, academic achievement, secondary school

Citation: Baixauli I, Rosello B, Berenguer C, Téllez de Meneses M and Miranda A (2021) Reading and Writing Skills in Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorder Without Intellectual Disability. Front. Psychol . 12:646849. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.646849

Received: 28 December 2020; Accepted: 07 June 2021; Published: 19 July 2021.

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Copyright © 2021 Baixauli, Rosello, Berenguer, Téllez de Meneses and Miranda. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Belen Rosello, [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Election Updates: R.F.K. Jr. announces Nicole Shanahan as his running mate.

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is running for president, announced Nicole Shanahan as his running mate. By The Associated Press
Oakland, Calif. A crowd of supporters for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as he announced his running mate, Nicole Shanahan. Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Raleigh, N.C. President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris embraced following their remarks during a health care event. Doug Mills/The New York Times
Raleigh, N.C. Protesters angry about President Biden's handling of the war in Gaza gathered as his motorcade approached. Doug Mills/The New York Times

Michael Gold

Donald Trump criticized NBC’s decision to cut ties with Ronna McDaniel, the former R.N.C. chair who he encouraged to step down. In a social media post, he called the network “fake news,” his favorite term for mainstream media outlets he opposes, and said its leaders were “weak.” The decision, he added, left McDaniel “in a very strange place, it’s called NEVER NEVERLAND, and it’s not a place you want to be.”

Chris Cameron

My colleague Katie Rogers is reporting that former President Barack Obama, fearing that President Biden could lose to Donald Trump, is making regular calls to the White House to help strategize for his expected rematch with his predecessor in November. The two are set to appear together in New York later this week. Read the full story here .

Kellen Browning

Kari Lake, the close Trump ally running for Senate in Arizona, has asked a court for a hearing to determine how much money she owes a local election official who sued her for defamation after she accused him of helping to steal the 2022 governor’s race from her. By asking a court to proceed straight to a judgment, she is effectively choosing not to fight his defamation suit, which she called a “political witch hunt.”

Vice President Kamala Harris, in her remarks to supporters in North Carolina, highlighted the White House’s work in expanding access to health care. She castigated “extremists in our country trying to take away medical care" or make it more expensive, a thinly-veiled criticism of Republicans, who have long sought to cut or repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Rebecca Davis O’Brien

Nicole Shanahan, after Kennedy announced her as his running mate in California, just described a “crisis in reproductive health, embedded in a larger epidemic of chronic disease,” which she attributed to toxic substances in the environment, “electromagnetic pollution,” and medications. Chronic disease, she said, will be a major focus of her candidacy and a Kennedy White House.

President Biden, speaking about health care in Raleigh, N.C., today, promised to restore abortion protections as “the law of the land” if re-elected in November, though he didn't address how. He was joined on stage by Gov. Roy Cooper, who he called “the best governor” in the nation, as he wrapped up.

Early on in his health care remarks today in North Carolina, President Biden was interrupted by protesters imploring him to consider the health of displaced Palestinians in Gaza. “Everybody deserves health care,” he replied. After the protesters were removed from the room, he added: “They have a point. We need to get a lot more care in to the Gaza Strip."

Shanahan just took the stage, at first looking teary-eyed and emotional, as she did in the deeply personal video that just aired . But as she began to speak, her voice got steadier as she described her difficult childhood here in Oakland — her family relied on food stamps and government aid. Her mother was a Chinese immigrant who worked as a family caretaker, and her father struggled with addiction and regular unemployment .

In the video from Kennedy's running mate, Nicole Shanahan, she just described how her young daughter was diagnosed with autism as a toddler, then pivoted to a discussion of chronic disease and environmental toxins. This is a major source of her affinity with Kennedy — she did not mention vaccines, but this will be a signal to his supporters that she is on board with one of his central causes: vaccines and childhood health.

“Here she is, Nicole Shanahan,” Kennedy said, and then he left the stage. But instead of seeing her, we get a campaign video of her. (The footage is glossy, but her audio is pretty gritty, attesting to the perhaps last-minute production here.) Campaign aides are passing “Kennedy Shanahan” signs around the gymnasium.

He has pivoted now to another central argument of his campaign: That he is speaking for the millions of Americans who don’t want “more of the same,” meaning President Biden or former President Donald J. Trump. "If we can persuade enough Americans to vote out of hope, rather than out of fear, we are going to be in the White House," he said.

Kennedy has been talking for nearly half an hour now. A major theme of his speech, and the hour of speeches before him, is health and the environment — he said he wanted a vice president who “shared my passion for wholesome, healthy foods, chemical free" and, he added, that are, "from good soils.”

Nicole Shanahan, who was introduced at least 20 minutes ago as Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s running mate, has yet to walk onto the stage here in Oakland. It's been an unusually protracted V.P. rollout, but Kennedy likes to talk. He just finished a florid description of corporate and government power as a “harpy” straddling Washington, somewhere above the “bleaching bones of the American middle class.”

I’m in Oakland, Calif., for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s announcement of his running mate — crowds are still trickling into the Henry J. Kaiser Center for the Arts. Right now, Metta Sandiford-Artest — the former N.B.A. player once known as Metta World Peace and Ron Artest — is giving brief remarks of support for Mr. Kennedy. “It is such an honor to be here, and let’s bring a new president into America,” he told the audience.

North Carolina Democrats are trickling into the gymnasium of a community center in Raleigh to hear President Biden and Vice President Harris speak today. This is one of the last stops on the Biden campaign’s tour of battleground states. President Biden is expected to give remarks in about an hour.

Neil Vigdor

NBC News faced a fresh round of internal dissent on Monday over its hiring of Ronna McDaniel, the former Republican National Committee chairwoman, as an on-air contributor. On MSNBC, several hosts protested the move, including Joe Scarborough, Nicolle Wallace and Rachel Maddow, who criticized Ms. McDaniel for her role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. “You wouldn’t hire a made man, like a mobster, to work in a D.A.’s office,” Ms. Maddow said on her show.

Maggie Astor

Oral arguments are underway in the big abortion case the Supreme Court is hearing today. You can follow along live here .

Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina, a Democrat, lashed out at the G.O.P. candidates in his state as “the most extreme right-wing Republican ticket in the country” while speaking at a journalism awards dinner in Washington on Monday night. He singled out inflammatory statements made by Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the Republican nominee for governor, though he did not name him directly. (Mr. Cooper is term-limited from running again.)

Katie Glueck

David McCormick, a Republican seeking to challenge Senator Bob Casey in Pennsylvania’s Senate race, is out with his first television ad focused on his time as a wrestler growing up. Mr. Casey’s campaign responded by calling McCormick “Connecticut man,” a reference to the time he spends out of state. “David McCormick can’t pronounce the iconic Pennsylvania beer Yuengling,” the statement concluded.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments today on the availability of the abortion pill mifepristone — a highly consequential case that, if the justices ruled against the pill, could sharply restrict access to abortion in every state. Democrats widely see the abortion issue as a political winner, while Republicans acknowledge that it damaged the party in the 2022 midterms.

Nicole Shanahan, a wealthy lawyer, is Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vice-presidential pick.

In an explicit play for young voters and Americans disillusioned by the state of the country’s politics, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Tuesday named Nicole Shanahan , a 38-year-old Silicon Valley lawyer, investor and political unknown, as his running mate in his independent presidential bid.

The selection of Ms. Shanahan brings youth and an outsider’s idealism to the ticket for Mr. Kennedy, the political scion whose long-shot White House campaign is threatening to complicate the electoral calculus for both President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump.

But it also brings a source of financial support: Ms. Shanahan, who was formerly married to the Google co-founder Sergey Brin, has already contributed more than $4.5 million to help Mr. Kennedy’s bid. Mr. Kennedy faces a costly effort to get on the ballot in all 50 states, as he says he will try to do. And he had a tighter timeline to name a vice-presidential choice, because some states require a full ticket to be on the petition for independent candidates to be placed on the ballot.

“I found exactly the right person,” Mr. Kennedy said at a rally in Oakland, Calif., as he revealed his choice. Praising Ms. Shanahan as a “gifted administrator” and a “fierce warrior mom” with experience navigating issues of artificial intelligence and intellectual property, he described her as “the daughter of immigrants who overcame every daunting obstacle and went on to achieve the highest levels of the American dream.”

Taking the stage more than a half-hour after Mr. Kennedy had announced her as his running mate, Ms. Shanahan echoed many of the themes of his campaign, including skepticism of vaccines, concerns about chronic disease and corruption in America, calls for a cleaner environment and the elimination of pesticides and genetically modified foods.

“The very failure of both parties to do their job, to protect their founding values, has contributed to the decline of this country in my lifetime,” said Ms. Shanahan, who described herself as a lifelong Democrat. “Maybe that’s why I see so many Republicans disillusioned with their party as I become disillusioned with mine. If you are one of those disillusioned Republicans, I welcome you to join me, a disillusioned Democrat, in this movement to unify and heal America.”

As recently as last month, Ms. Shanahan’s only public connection to Mr. Kennedy was her $4 million donation helping to pay for a Super Bowl ad backing him.

Though trained as a lawyer, her work in recent years has focused on funding research on health and the environment, issues that Mr. Kennedy — an environmental lawyer and vaccine skeptic who has promoted conspiracy theories — has made cornerstones of his campaign.

Ms. Shanahan took the stage on Tuesday more than two hours into the rally, after a lengthy parade of speakers who variously denounced school shutdowns during the pandemic, carcinogenic pesticides in the American food supply, the “corporate capture” of the American government and what they called censorship of dissident voices in the mainstream news media.

One speaker, Calley Means, the founder of a supplement and health company, said, “An unemotional statement of economic fact is that there has been no more profitable invention in the history of America than a sick child, a child with chronic disease.” Another speaker was Metta Sandiford-Artest, the former N.B.A. player who used to be known as Ron Artest and Metta World Peace.

Mr. Kennedy spoke alone onstage at length after naming Ms. Shanahan, saying she was going to stand up to Wall Street, “the crony capitalists” and Silicon Valley. He later said she was “going to help me free our country” from the “corrupt merger of state and corporate power that now straddles our nation’s capital like a mythical harpy.”

Ms. Shanahan first appeared to Tuesday’s audience in a prerecorded video, in which she described how her young daughter’s diagnosis with autism led her to research chronic disease and environmental toxins. Though she did not mention vaccines, this experience and her interest in the subject appeared to speak to a notable slice of Mr. Kennedy’s base: parents who are skeptical of childhood vaccinations and who criticize a medical establishment that they say pushes medical interventions on children.

When she took the stage, Ms. Shanahan at first appeared teary-eyed, but as she spoke, her voice grew steadier as she described her difficult childhood in Oakland. Her mother — who was in the audience — immigrated from China and worked as a caretaker and a secretary. Her father was often out of work, she said, and struggled with substance abuse.

In her remarks, Ms. Shanahan described a “crisis in reproductive health, embedded in a larger epidemic of chronic disease,” which she attributed to toxic substances in the environment, “electromagnetic pollution” — a reference that drew a loud and relieved “yes!” from a woman at the back of the cavernous event space — and medications. Chronic disease, she said, would be a major focus of her candidacy and a Kennedy White House.

Ms. Shanahan emerged as Mr. Kennedy’s favored vice-presidential pick in recent weeks, after the N.F.L. quarterback Aaron Rodgers and the former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura had been at the top of his shortlist .

She has a history of contributing to Democrats, including Mr. Biden’s 2020 campaign. She has backed Mr. Kennedy since last spring, when he was still seeking the Democratic nomination. In October, he became an independent candidate, saying the Democratic Party had corruptly blocked his efforts to challenge Mr. Biden in the primary race.

In an interview last month, Ms. Shanahan said she had initially backed Mr. Kennedy because she was “excited” by him and was worried about Mr. Biden’s health. She said she had spoken with Mr. Kennedy only once, on the phone, when he was still running as a Democrat.

When Mr. Kennedy left the party, she was “incredibly disappointed,” she said, alarmed by how “divisive” she thought the move was. “I kind of withdrew, and paused all my political giving.”

It was only in January that she began to re-engage with Mr. Kennedy’s campaign, and as she did, she said, she found “almost like a secret society of individuals” who were backing him. “It was very, very interesting to me to hear how people have been kind of stirred by his message and his willingness to be out there,” she said.

She made the large donation helping to bankroll the Super Bowl ad supporting Mr. Kennedy, which was bought by an allied super PAC, and told The New York Times that she had provided creative guidance. The ad, which repurposed a 1960 ad for Mr. Kennedy’s uncle, John F. Kennedy, drew criticism from members of the Kennedy family, who have emphatically distanced themselves from the campaign.

Democratic allies of Mr. Biden have worried that Mr. Kennedy could tip the election to Mr. Trump, although polls have left a muddled picture of which major-party contender Mr. Kennedy would siphon more votes from. A recent Fox News national poll put his support at around 13 percent, drawing roughly equal shares of voters away from his dominant rivals.

Still, the Democratic Party has embarked on a legal offensive against Mr. Kennedy that aims to block him from the ballot, especially in crucial battleground states.

In a call arranged by the Democratic National Committee on Tuesday as a response to Mr. Kennedy’s announcement, Representative Robert Garcia of California said: “This is who Robert Kennedy selects, essentially a mega donor to fund his campaign with no experience, who is leaning into his anti-vax conspiracy theories, and has no real core as it relates to the truth or science.”

Allies of Mr. Trump also appeared wary of Mr. Kennedy on Tuesday.

A super PAC supporting the former president put out a statement describing Mr. Kennedy as a “far-left liberal with a far-left liberal running mate.”

Mr. Trump’s campaign spokesman, Steven Cheung, said later: “R.F.K. Jr. is a radical leftist — an environmental whack job who loves E.V. mandates, wants to end gasoline-powered engines. He’s no independent.”

Michael Gold contributed reporting

3 things to know about Nicole Shanahan, R.F.K. Jr.’s running mate.

The independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Nicole Shanahan as his running mate on Tuesday, elevating a little-known philanthropist and political donor to second-in-command on a ticket challenging President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump.

Here are three things to know about Ms. Shanahan.

She has signaled her support for Kennedy’s vaccine stance.

Ms. Shanahan told The New York Times in February that she had been drawn to Mr. Kennedy in part for his efforts to challenge scientific consensus on matters including vaccines.

Mr. Kennedy and his organization, Children’s Health Defense, have promoted debunked claims about the risks of vaccinations against measles, polio, tetanus, meningitis, Covid and other diseases.

“I do wonder about vaccine injuries,” Ms. Shanahan said last month, while saying she was “not an anti-vaxxer.” “I think there needs to be a space to have these conversations.”

She also praised Mr. Kennedy’s work as an environmental lawyer, though he has become better known for his anti-vaccine activism and his embrace of political conspiracy theories.

“I do think we have an environmental health crisis in this country,” she said. “I do believe Americans deserve clean water. And we can’t achieve that in the current climate of politics.”

She has never held elected office.

Ms. Shanahan has been a Democratic donor for over a decade but has never held or run for office. She has spent her career as a lawyer and tech entrepreneur focused on health and environmental research.

She founded and leads the Bia-Echo Foundation, which funds reproductive rights, criminal-justice reform and environmental projects, and previously founded ClearAccessIP, a patent analytics firm.

Ms. Shanahan married Sergey Brin, a co-founder of Google, in 2018, and they divorced last summer. Before that, she worked with the Sergey Brin Family Foundation, which funded a variety of left-leaning organizations.

She contributed $6,600 — the legal maximum — to Mr. Kennedy when he was running for the Democratic nomination last year, before he switched to running as an independent. She also gave $500,000 over the summer to Common Sense, a super PAC backing him. In 2020, she donated $25,000 to the Biden Victory Fund, following a donation of $2,800 to Marianne Williamson during the Democratic primaries.

She bankrolled Kennedy’s Super Bowl ad.

Earlier this year, Ms. Shanahan gave $4 million to American Values 2024, a super PAC supporting Mr. Kennedy, for the purpose of running an ad during the Super Bowl. She also helped coordinate production.

That contribution covered more than half the cost of the ad, which was nearly identical to one that John F. Kennedy, Mr. Kennedy’s uncle, ran during his 1960 presidential campaign. The remake angered some of Mr. Kennedy’s relatives , who criticized him for using images of — and Democratic nostalgia for — his uncle to promote a campaign that they argued the former president would have rejected.

A co-chairman of the super PAC, Tony Lyons, said last month that Ms. Shanahan had been “the driving force behind the decision” to remake the 1960 ad, after the group had to scrap an earlier ad idea because it showed Mr. Kennedy speaking directly to the camera and could have violated a ban on candidates’ coordinating with super PACs.

Rebecca Davis O’Brien contributed reporting.

In North Carolina, Biden attacks Trump and G.O.P. over health care.

President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris used a North Carolina visit on Tuesday to highlight their administration’s work on expanding access to affordable health care, as Democrats seek a contrast with Republicans on the issue.

Speaking to a crowd of more than 200 Democratic leaders and supporters in the gymnasium of a community center near downtown Raleigh, the president and vice president attacked Republicans for seeking to repeal or limit parts of the Affordable Care Act. Ms. Harris called them “extremists,” who are “trying to take away medical care in our country or make it more expensive.”

Mr. Biden echoed those denouncements and pointed blame at his rival, former President Donald J. Trump, for repeatedly trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act and for spreading disinformation about Covid-19 as the death toll soared.

“Trump didn’t level with the American people. He told Americans, all they had to do was inject bleach into themselves,” Mr. Biden said.

He sought to highlight how long members of the opposing party have been trying to unwind former President Barack Obama’s signature health care measure. “Even before the pandemic, Republicans in Congress were hellbent on getting rid of the A.C.A.,” he said.

After reading a laundry list of ways Americans could lose health care coverage if the Affordable Care Act were repealed or restricted, Mr. Biden vowed to protect access to abortion, which has animated national politics since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. If he and Ms. Harris are re-elected in November, Mr. Biden said, they would restore its protections as “the law of the land.”

While the brief mention of abortion signaled that it would be one of his health care priorities for a second term, he did not offer details on how he planned to deliver on his pledge to protect abortion rights.

He was interrupted by protesters calling for a cease-fire in the war between Israel and Hamas and urging him to consider the health of displaced Palestinians in Gaza. “Everyone deserves health care,” Mr. Biden responded, and he agreed with the demonstrators that more should be done to aid those in the Gaza Strip.

The North Carolina visit was one of the last stops on Mr. Biden’s “Month of Action” tour of battleground states; his appearances in several other states were without interruption.

His focus on health care comes as Democrats celebrate the 14th anniversary of the Affordable Care Act and the more than 20 million people who signed up for coverage this year — the most since the law was enacted in 2010. The White House has used the benchmark to criticize Republicans, who have spent the past decade attempting to repeal parts or all of the law.

Former President Donald J. Trump, seeking a second term, revived his attacks on the Affordable Care Act toward the end of last year, calling for it to be “replaced.” Just last week, the Republican Study Committee, a large group of House Republicans, released a budget proposal that took aim at the law’s funding .

“If they got their way, these Republican officials would want a country where 45 million Americans — including 1.4 million North Carolinians — would lose their health insurance,” Anita Dunn, a senior adviser to the president, said during a call with reporters on Monday.

The president and the vice president attended a campaign fund-raiser in the state after their remarks. Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat who signed North Carolina’s Medicaid expansion into law last year , was onstage with the president after the rally. Mr. Biden referred to him as “the best governor” in the nation.

The stop in North Carolina underscores the state’s growing significance to Democrats, as they work to defeat Mr. Trump in November. Mr. Biden lost the state by less than two points in 2020 — the same year that he carried Georgia, a state he visited earlier this month, by fewer than 12,000 votes.

Some Democrats have expressed more confidence in the party’s prospects in North Carolina, pointing to a governor’s race that is likely to be among the most closely watched in the country. Josh Stein, the state’s Democratic attorney general, is running against Mark Robinson, the Republican lieutenant governor, who has a history of inflammatory and divisive statements . Mr. Robinson has also called for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act.

Georgia, for its part, does not have a potentially galvanizing top-of-ticket race outside of the presidency. But Mr. Biden’s campaign is maintaining its focus on both states.

Mr. Biden’s campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, said Tuesday that the campaign had poured hundreds of thousands of dollars onto the airwaves in Georgia and North Carolina, through advertisements that focus on Black, Latino and Asian American voters. Georgia and North Carolina, she said, make up “a critical piece” of the campaign’s path to victory.

“Our campaign will engage voters across these states, from urban centers to the suburbs and rural areas, where there are more Democratic voters than any other region in the country,” Ms. Chavez Rodriguez said.

Democrats have found electoral success by running on health care before: in 2018, when Mr. Trump and his administration focused on undoing the Affordable Care Act.

Reid J. Epstein and Maya King

Reid J. Epstein reported from Washington, and Maya King from Raleigh, N.C.

Biden, interrupted by Gaza protesters, says they ‘have a point.’

President Biden, after being interrupted at an event in North Carolina on Tuesday by protesters angry about his approach to the war in Gaza, told the audience that the demonstrators “have a point,” adding, “We need to get a lot more care into Gaza.”

Mr. Biden’s remark, which drew cheers and applause from the crowd at a community center gymnasium in Raleigh, came after the White House and the Biden campaign had spent weeks trying to keep pro-Palestinian protesters away from the president’s events, hoping to keep the spotlight on his domestic agenda.

In Raleigh on Tuesday, more than 200 people invited by the White House attended an event where Mr. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris spoke about the Affordable Care Act and their administration’s health care record.

The interruption came from a group of about half a dozen people.

“What about the health care in Gaza?” one person shouted, before another yelled it again.

Mr. Biden stopped. “Everyone deserves health care,” he said.

Many people then began calling out at once. Mr. Biden paused for about 15 seconds. “Be patient with them,” he said.

There was more shouting. One person yelled that Mr. Biden was “complicit.” Another said that health centers in Gaza were “being bombed.”

“They have a point,” Mr. Biden said. “We need to get a lot more care into Gaza.”

The brief back and forth was Mr. Biden’s first direct exchange in weeks with protesters who are angry about his approach to the Israel-Gaza war. His recent campaign stops have been small, invitation-only events at which he has spoken only to his most dedicated supporters. During a campaign event in Milwaukee this month, hundreds of protesters against the war in Gaza were kept a block away, where their chants of “Genocide Joe” could not be heard inside the building hosting the Biden gathering.

In January, Mr. Biden was repeatedly interrupted by Gaza demonstrators during a speech about abortion rights in Virginia. After that episode, he met privately with a small group of his supporters and urged them not to view the protesters as political enemies, saying that they deserved sympathy and that their cause was “really important.”

Mr. Biden’s latest remarks about Gaza came at a particularly fraught moment for relations between the White House and the Israeli government. This week, the United States allowed a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for an “immediate cease-fire” in Gaza to pass after vetoing several prior proposals.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel responded by canceling meetings planned in Washington between a high-level Israeli delegation and Biden administration officials.

And on Sunday, Vice President Harris, who has been more publicly sympathetic to the plight of Palestinians than Mr. Biden, said during an interview with ABC News that “it would be a mistake” for Mr. Netanyahu to begin a military operation into the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, as he has been threatening.

Asked in the interview if there would be “consequences” if Israel does invade Rafah, Ms. Harris replied, “I am ruling out nothing.”

Mr. Biden’s stop in North Carolina was the end of a tour of presidential battleground states he embarked upon after his State of the Union address this month. His public appearances in seven other states took place without interruption.

Fretting about election-year deep fakes, states roll out new rules for A.I. content.

Wisconsin for the first time this year will begin requiring political advertisers to disclose the use of content generated by artificial intelligence or face financial penalties. But the battleground state, one that played a critical role in the last two elections, is not alone.

An increasing number of states have advanced A.I.-related legislation to combat attempts to mislead voters during the 2024 election, according to a new analysis by the Voting Rights Lab, a national voting rights organization.

Voting Rights Lab said it was tracking over 100 bills in 40 state legislatures, amid some high-profile cases of “deep-fake” video technology and computer-generated avatars and voices being used in political campaigns and advertisements.

One of the more glaring examples happened in New Hampshire, where a criminal investigation was opened after voters there received robocalls mimicking President Biden’s voice and urging Democrats to not vote in the state’s primary in January.

Another instance marred last year’s election in Slovakia , where deep-fake voice recordings falsely purported to be of the leader of a pro-Western political party depicted him as buying votes. The party narrowly lost to a pro-Kremlin party.

In Wisconsin, political advertisers will face a $1,000 fine for each violation under a bill signed into law on Thursday by Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat.

A similar measure won approval from both chambers of the state legislature in Florida and is heading to Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, for review. A spokeswoman for Mr. DeSantis said that he had not yet received the final version of the bill, which includes both civil and criminal penalties.

In Arizona, the State Senate and State House have passed their own versions of bills that would ban the use of deep fakes, or artificial images. Each chamber’s legislation still hasn’t been taken up by the other chamber yet. One version would make it a crime to engage in deep fakes, though only within 90 days of an election. Repeat violations would be a felony.

States like California, Texas, Washington, Minnesota and Michigan have already rolled out laws regulating the use of A.I . in campaign advertising.

Michael M. Grynbaum and John Koblin

NBC News cut ties with Ronna McDaniel, the former R.N.C. chair, after a network firestorm.

The Ronna McDaniel era at NBC News has come to an abrupt and chaotic end.

Facing an extraordinary on-air revolt by its leading stars, NBC’s top news executive said on Tuesday that he had decided to cut ties with Ms. McDaniel, the former chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, who was hired last week as an on-air political commentator.

Her tenure at NBC lasted four days.

Ms. McDaniel’s appointment, announced with fanfare on Friday, was immediately criticized by reporters at the network and viewers on social media. Fans of MSNBC, NBC’s left-leaning cable arm, were particularly outraged, citing Ms. McDaniel’s leadership of the Republican Party under former President Donald J. Trump and her handling of his false claims that the 2020 election was rigged.

“After listening to the legitimate concerns of many of you, I have decided that Ronna McDaniel will not be an NBC News contributor,” Cesar Conde, the chairman of the NBCUniversal News Group, wrote in a staff memo on Tuesday.

“No organization, particularly a newsroom, can succeed unless it is cohesive and aligned,” Mr. Conde continued. “Over the last few days, it has become clear that this appointment undermines that goal.”

Ms. McDaniel did not respond to requests for comment. She learned of her dismissal through media reports on Tuesday evening, before NBC told her directly, a person close to her said.

The firestorm over Ms. McDaniel is a major test for Mr. Conde, who has led NBC’s news arm since 2020.

He had approved her hiring to help ensure that election-year coverage included a broader range of political perspectives. Networks regularly hire Washington veterans as commentators; Reince Priebus, Mr. Trump’s former chief of staff, recently joined ABC News.

But multiple star anchors viewed Ms. McDaniel’s involvement in Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election result as disqualifying, and they lined up one by one to denounce NBC’s decision on its own airwaves.

On Monday night, Rachel Maddow devoted 29 minutes of her show — the top-rated program on MSNBC — to addressing Ms. McDaniel’s hiring, calling it “inexplicable” and associating her with historical figures who attempted authoritarian takeovers of the government. She told her bosses: “Take a minute, acknowledge that maybe it wasn’t the right call.”

Her monologue followed similar calls from the MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski and Nicolle Wallace, among others. Ms. Wallace, a former Republican who once earned Democrats’ ire as a chief defender of George W. Bush, said on Monday that NBC had given a green light for “election deniers” to spread falsehoods “as paid contributors to our sacred airwaves.”

Ms. McDaniel, who occasionally clashed with Mr. Trump, left the Republican National Committee this month under pressure from the former president and his allies. She quickly signed with Creative Artists Agency, the Hollywood powerhouse, and met with executives at several networks. Her deal with NBC was worth about $300,000 a year, according to a person familiar with its details.

In his memo on Tuesday, Mr. Conde described Ms. McDaniel’s hiring as “a collective recommendation” by members of his leadership team. Those deputies included Carrie Budoff Brown, who oversees NBC News political coverage; Rebecca Blumenstein, the NBC News president; and Rashida Jones, the MSNBC president. (Ms. Blumenstein is a former editor at The New York Times.)

But Mr. Conde acknowledged that he had ultimately approved her appointment, and he accepted full responsibility for the decision. “I want to personally apologize to our team members who felt we let them down,” he wrote.

The episode underscored the deeply partisan sphere in which news organizations are trying to operate — and the challenge of fairly representing conservative and pro-Trump viewpoints in their coverage, if major Republican Party figures like Ms. McDaniel are deemed unacceptable by viewers or colleagues.

Mr. Conde wrote that NBC remained “committed to the principle that we must have diverse viewpoints on our programs, and to that end, we will redouble our efforts to seek voices that represent different parts of the political spectrum.”

Shortly after Mr. Conde’s decision to reverse course on Tuesday, the anti-Trump MSNBC anchors Joy Reid and Ms. Maddow applauded the move on the air.

Ms. McDaniel had tried to walk a fine line regarding Mr. Trump’s baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. She participated in a call with Mr. Trump in which he placed pressure on Michigan officials to not certify election results. But she also kept the Republican National Committee separated from many of Mr. Trump’s audacious lawsuits to overturn the results, and she confronted criticism from the Trump camp for not taking more aggressive steps to question national election processes.

The backlash at NBC has created other problems for Ms. McDaniel. She is no longer represented by CAA, which negotiated her deal with NBC, a person with knowledge of the change said.

Mr. Trump, for his part, criticized NBC on Tuesday after Ms. McDaniel’s exit. “The top people at NBC ARE WEAK,” the former president wrote in a post on his social media site. He added that Ms. McDaniel, whose departure from the national committee he had encouraged, was now in a kind of limbo.

“It leaves her in a very strange place,” Mr. Trump wrote. “It’s called NEVER NEVERLAND, and it’s not a place you want to be.”

Michael Gold contributed reporting.

Reid J. Epstein

Reporting from Washington

Biden vows federal help after bridge collapse in Baltimore.

President Biden said on Tuesday that the federal government would “pay the entire cost of reconstructing” the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, adding that he hoped it would be rebuilt and reopened “as soon as humanly possible.”

Mr. Biden’s midday remarks from the White House came as he sought to demonstrate a robust federal government response to the bridge disaster, the second on a major interstate highway in the nation’s Northeast Corridor in 10 months.

The president’s optimism about rebuilding Baltimore’s bridge follows the successful effort last summer to put back together an Interstate 95 overpass in Philadelphia that collapsed after a fire .

Mr. Biden visited six days later and stood alongside Pennsylvania’s governor for an announcement that the overpass would be repaired and reopened within two weeks. Baltimore’s bridge collapse is a far larger infrastructure project that is all but certain to take much longer to repair. Mr. Biden said at the White House that he expected to visit “as soon as I can.” No trip has yet been arranged, officials said.

Maryland isn’t a presidential battleground, but like Pennsylvania, it does have a Democratic governor who is a key Biden ally with significant political ambitions of his own and a Senate race that will help determine which party controls the chamber next year.

Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland declared a state of emergency. Mr. Biden said he and the governor had spoken Tuesday morning.

It will take time to determine the political fallout from the Baltimore bridge collapse. The human toll of the collapse remains undetermined, though emergency responders were searching for six construction workers. And if Baltimore’s port is closed for a significant period, it would enact a severe and extended economic toll on the region.

So far Maryland officials have not sought to cast blame or seek a partisan advantage. Former Gov. Larry Hogan, a centrist Republican who is running for the Senate, wrote on social media that he was praying for those still missing. The two Democrats in a primary to face Mr. Hogan, Representative David Trone and Angela Alsobrooks , the Prince George’s County executive, released similar statements of grief and shock.

When the Interstate 95 bridge in Philadelphia reopened 15 days after it collapsed , Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania declared it a feat of government competence and has since incorporated it into his talking points for why Mr. Biden deserves a second term.

Now Mr. Biden, who is scheduled to travel to North Carolina on Tuesday, has another high-profile opportunity to demonstrate how his administration responds to a major civic calamity.

Michael Gold and Maggie Haberman

Trump’s newest venture? A $60 Bible.

Before he turned to politics, former President Donald J. Trump lent his star power and celebrity endorsement to a slew of consumer products — steaks, vodka and even for-profit education, to name just a few.

On Tuesday, Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, added a new item to the list: a $60 Bible.

Days before Easter, Mr. Trump posted a video on his social media platform in which he encouraged his supporters to buy the “God Bless the USA Bible,” named after the ballad by the country singer Lee Greenwood, which Mr. Trump plays as he takes the stage at his rallies.

“All Americans need a Bible in their home, and I have many. It’s my favorite book,” said Mr. Trump, who before entering politics was not overtly religious and who notably stumbled while referencing a book of the Bible during his 2016 campaign. “It’s a lot of people’s favorite book.”

Though Mr. Trump is not selling the Bible, he is getting royalties from purchases, according to a person familiar with the details of the business arrangement.

Priced at $59.99, plus shipping and tax, the “God Bless the USA Bible” includes a King James Bible and a handwritten version of the chorus of Mr. Greenwood’s song, and copies of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence and the Pledge of Allegiance.

In his video, Mr. Trump expressed his approval of the book’s blend of theology with foundational American political documents, framing that mix as central to the political call that has been his longtime campaign slogan, Make America Great Again.

“Religion and Christianity are the biggest things missing from this country,” Mr. Trump said. Later, he added, “We must make America pray again.”

As he runs for president this year, Mr. Trump has framed his campaign as a crusade to defend Christian values from the left. He often makes false or misleading claims that Democrats are persecuting Christians. Last month, he told a religious media convention that Democrats wanted to “tear down crosses.”

His Bible sales pitch comes as he appears to be confronting a significant financial squeeze. With his legal fees growing while he fights four criminal cases and a number of civil lawsuits, Mr. Trump is also being required to post a $175 million bond while he appeals his New York civil fraud case — a hefty amount, though one that is significantly smaller than the $454 million penalty imposed in the case.

According to the Bible’s website, Mr. Trump’s “name, likeness and image” are being used “under paid license from CIC Ventures LLC.”

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to questions about the business arrangement. But CIC Ventures is also connected to another product Mr. Trump has hawked while campaigning: $399 “Never Surrender” sneakers that he announced at a sneaker convention in Philadelphia last month.

Michael C. Bender

A G.O.P. aide dropped his groping lawsuit against Matt Schlapp, a powerful conservative.

A lawsuit has been dropped against Matt Schlapp, the head of one of the nation’s largest conservative advocacy groups, after his accuser said the allegations were the result of a misunderstanding.

Carlton Huffman, 40, had accused Mr. Schlapp, 56, the head of the American Conservative Union and an adviser to former President Donald J. Trump, of groping him after a campaign event in Georgia in 2022.

In a statement on Tuesday, Mr. Huffman said he dropped his lawsuit against Mr. Schlapp, as well as related lawsuits against the American Conservative Union, the Conservative Political Action Conference and Caroline Wren, an adviser to Mr. Schlapp.

“The claims made in my lawsuits were the result of a complete misunderstanding, and I regret that the lawsuit caused pain to the Schlapp family,” Mr. Huffman said. “The Schlapps have advised that the statements made about me were the result of a misunderstanding, which was regrettable. Neither the Schlapps nor the ACU paid me anything to dismiss my claims against them.”

Mr. Schlapp also released a statement that didn’t mention Mr. Huffman, a longtime Republican political aide, and instead attacked the “left-wing media.”

“From the beginning, I asserted my innocence,” Mr. Schlapp said, adding that he and his wife, Mercedes Schlapp, a former Trump White House official, will “emerge from this ordeal stronger as husband and wife, stronger as parents to our five daughters, stronger as friends to those who stood by us.”

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Educational Interventions for Children and Youth with Autism: A 40-Year Perspective

Laura J. Hall

Bonnie R. Kraemer

Sallie W. Nowell

Parameters of the Commentary

Historical Precedents to Education Interventions

Key Themes in Education for Autistic Children and Youth

Adult-led and Naturalistic Forms of Instruction

Adult-Directed and Discrete Trial Training

Naturalistic Intervention

Education in Inclusive Settings

Intervention and Instruction in Content Areas

Explicit Instruction for Academic Skills

Interventions to Promote Social Engagement, Skills and Relationships

Adult-led Teaching and Reinforcement Interventions

Social Reciprocity and Peer-Mediated Interventions

Group-Based Social skills Training

Forms and Functions of Communication for Autistic Children and Youth

Communication and Verbal Language Skills

Interventions for Nonverbal Children and Alternative and Augmentative Communication (AAC)

Aversive Strategies and Increased Focus on Positive Behavior Supports and Intervention

Collateral Mental Health Conditions

Post-School Outcomes

Self-Determination

Technology-Assisted Instruction and Interventions

Ineffective Interventions

Evidence-Based Practices for Children and Youth with Autism

Schools as Contexts for Implementing Interventions

Complexity of School Settings

Structure of Schools

Disparities in Schools

Emergence of iSciences

Acknowledgments

Author Contributions

Declaration

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