Prelinguistic and Minimally Verbal Communicators on the Autism Spectrum

Deb Keen is a Professor of Education with the Autism Centre of Excellence in the School of Education and Professional Studies at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. She has published extensively on her research into ways to enhance participation and engagement of individuals with autism and their families in home, school, and community. She is particularly interested in evidence-based practice, communication, problem behavior, early intervention, and family-centered practice. Hedda Meadan is an associate professor in the Department of Special Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a board-certified behavior analyst. Her areas of interest include social communication skills of young children with autism and other developmental disabilities, intervention methods to enhance these spheres of functioning, and families of individuals with disabilities. Nancy Brady is an associate professor at the Department of Speech Language Hearing Sciences and Disorders, University of Kansas. She is an ASHA fellow and past chair of the National Joint Committee on Communication Needs of Persons with Severe Disabilities (NJC). Her current research, funded by the National Institutes of Health, is focused on improving assessments for expressive communication in individuals with minimal verbal skills associated with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and on longitudinal analyses of development in fragile X syndrome. Jim Hall e is a professor emeritus in the Department of Special Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. For more than 40 years, he has been involved in research related to communication and language development among children with autism and other developmental disabilities. His program of research has focused on examining both social communication of young children with significant intellectual disability and the ecological factors that facilitate and discourage communicative growth. His methodological and conceptual approach is characterized by single-case research and applied behavior analysis.