Social stories have become increasingly popular for teaching appropriate behavioral skills to children With autism, yet current literature Warns that little empirical evidence is available that documents the effects of this intervention. Research that does exist targets participants With mild to moderate disabilities. In this study, a special education teacher used social stories in her classroom to teach 2 children With severe autism hoW to make activity choices, play appropriately With materials chosen, and play appropriately With peers in an Exceptional Student Education (ESE) classroom. The classroom teacher and a teacher's aide measured student abilities in choice-making and time spent playing appropriately during a free-play setting. The researchers found support for the use of social stories to teach choice-making and play skills to children With autism.

Parents of infants served in Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICU) often experience extreme levels of stress that might be associated with elevated symptoms of depression and posttraumatic stress. We examined the effect of a brief journal writing exercise on the depressive and posttraumatic stress symptoms of mothers of NICU graduates using an experimental group-comparison design. Participants were 38 women who had an infant hospitalized in an NICU in the previous 2 to 14 months. Dependent measures were a measure of depression, the Symptom Checklist 90 Revised (SCL-90-R; Derogatis, 1977) and a measure of posttraumatic stress, the Impact of Events Scale Revised (IES-R; Weiss, 1996). We found statistically significant differences between the treatment and control groups at posttest.

The authors examined students' reports of their college choice process to understand the influence of a set of psychological, personal, and institutional factors. The authors also examined potential moderating influences of generational status, gender, race, and SES on our variables of interest. A diverse sample of college freshmen (N ϭ 1,339), including 42% who were the first in their families to attend college, responded to a self-reporting, Web-based survey. Findings indicate that psychosocial factors and academic quality of the college were most influential for first-generation students as compared to their nonfirst-generation peers in the college choice process. However, gender, race, and SES moderated these influences in complex ways. For example, females rated the psychological variables higher than males; Asian American and African American first-generation students rated higher than their parents' preferences for which college to attend as compared to nonfirst-generation peers. First-generation females, African American in particular, considered academic quality more important than other groups. Our findings should be of value to counselors and other personnel who facilitate students' college choice process as well as college recruitment, retention, and diversity enhancement programs.

Videoconferencing has been successfully implemented to teach functional analysis (FA) procedures to service providers who support individuals with autism spectrum disorders. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the acquisition of the competencies for implementing FA methodology for special education teachers after participation in a group-format workshop via a videoconferencing program in which the training site and the remote site were located on different continents, connected through the internet. Four special education teachers in Saudi Arabia who did not have previous exposure to functional behavior assessment participated in the study. Teachers received 3 h of group-format training via Skype followed by individualized feedback. Training involved role-playing, video modeling, and reading materials. Results indicate that all four participants mastered the skills across at least two of the conditions with one participant demonstrating mastery across all four conditions.

Five sixth-grade students diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), taking psychostimulants for treatment of ADHD symptoms, and enrolled in a general education classroom participated in the study. Participants were taught self-management techniques to monitor academic performance, on-task behaviors, and disruptive behaviors. A multiple baseline design across students with intervention withdrawal embedded within each baseline was used to empirically assess the effectiveness of self-management. Self-management associated with increases of on-task behaviors and academic performance and with a decrease of disruptive behaviors when compared to other phases. Implications for practical application of the strategy in general education classrooms are discussed.