This study is aimed at assessing special education teachers' attitudes toward teaching pupils with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) and at determining the role of variables associated with a positive attitude towards the children and their education. Sixty-nine special education teachers were interviewed. The interview included two multiple-choice Likert-type questionnaires, one about teachers’ attitude, and another about teachers’ perceived needs in relation to the specific education of the pupil with ASD. The study shows a positive view of teachers’ expectations regarding the education of pupils with ASD. A direct logistic regression analysis was performed testing for experience with the child, school relationship with an ASD network and type of school (mainstream or special) as potential predictors. Although all three variables are useful in predicting special education teachers' attitudes, the most relevant was the relationship with an ASD network. Need for information and social support are the relatively highest needs expressed by teachers.

The relationship between parental input and child language development has had a complex history. It has become clear that indirect parent training for the parents of children with delayed language development is an important feature of interventions offered by speech and language therapists in the anglophone countries. Yet we know less about how this type of approach is realised in other countries. In this paper we report the results of a survey of practice undertaken as part of the work of COST Action IS1406, a European Union (EU) funded research network. The focus of this paper is specifically on parent-related questions and responses referring to children under the age of twelve. The survey was devised by members of the Action and circulated electronically during the summer of 2017. In all, 4024 practitioners responded from 60 countries, the majority of whom came from EU member countries. Respondents to the survey indicated that indirect therapy is commonly carried out via the parent in the early years and via teachers later. A range of professional groups, in addition to speech and language therapists, is likely to adopt this approach; including teachers, pedagogues and psychologists. A variety of interventions is reported, some of which have a reasonable evidence-base underpinning them. It is interesting to see the widespread involvement of fathers and other family members in interventions. Finally, the fact that practitioner characteristics (age, experience, location of practice etc.) are not related to the use of indirect techniques points to the universal recognition of the value of these approaches. Despite the very different traditions in the practice of intervention across countries, there is clearly a widespread recognition of the importance of indirect approaches to intervention and specifically those focusing on parents. The mixture of family members being involved in interventions is a very promising indication of the role sharing commonly associated with the contemporary family. Yet the number of specific intervention approaches identified is relatively small given the number of respondents. There is a need for a better understanding of what exactly practitioners are doing when they involve parents in intervention or carry out parent-child interaction interventions and how well these interventions work in routine practice. This also has implications for the application of evidence-based practice and the precise nature of the interventions concerned (advice to parents, video interaction training etc.).

An eye tracking experiment explored the gaze behaviour of deaf individuals when perceiving language in spoken and sign language only, and in sign-supported speech. Participants were deaf (n = 25) and hearing (n = 25) Spanish adolescents. Deaf students were prelingually profoundly deaf individuals with cochlear implants used by age 5 or earlier, or prelingually profoundly deaf native signers with deaf parents. The effectiveness of sign-supported speech has rarely been tested within the same group of children at discourse-level comprehension. Here, video-recorded texts, including spatial descriptions, were alternately transmitted in spoken language, sign language and sign-supported speech. The capacity of these communicative systems to equalise comprehension in deaf participants with that of spoken language in hearing participants was tested. Within-group analyses of deaf participants tested if the bimodal linguistic input of sign-supported speech favoured discourse comprehension compared to unimodal languages. Deaf participants with cochlear implants achieved equal comprehension to hearing controls in all communicative systems while deaf native signers with no cochlear implants achieved equal comprehension to hearing participants if tested in their native sign language. Comprehension of sign-supported speech was not increased compared to spoken language, even when spatial information was communicated. Eye movements of deaf and hearing participants were tracked and data of dwell times spent looking at the face or body area of the sign model were analysed. Within-group analyses focused on differences between native and non-native signers. Dwell times of hearing participants were equally distributed across upper and lower areas of the face while deaf participants mainly looked at the mouth area; this could enable information to be obtained from mouthings in sign language and from lipreading in sign-supported speech and spoken language. Few fixations were directed towards the signs, although these were more frequent when spatial language was transmitted. Both native and non-native signers looked mainly at the face when perceiving sign language, although non-native signers looked significantly more at the body than native signers. This distribution of gaze fixations suggested that deaf individuals – particularly native signers – mainly perceived signs through peripheral vision.

The goal of this study was to compare the processing of social information in deaf and hearing adolescents. A task was developed to assess social information processing (SIP) skills of deaf adolescents based on Crick and Dodge’s (1994; A review and reformulation of social information-processing mechanisms in children’s social adjustment. Psychological Bulletin, 115, 74–101) reformulated six-stage model. It consisted of a structured interview after watching 18 scenes of situations depicting participation in a peer group or provocations by peers. Participants included 32 deaf and 20 hearing adolescents and young adults aged between 13 and 21 years. Deaf adolescents and adults had lower scores than hearing participants in all the steps of the SIP model (coding, interpretation, goal formulation, response generation, response decision, and representation). However, deaf girls and women had better scores on social adjustment and on some SIP skills than deaf male participants.

Purpose: Although researchers have explored parental perspectives of childhood speech and language disorders, most studies have been conducted in English-speaking countries. Little is known about parental experiences across countries, where procedures of language screening and services for language disorders differ. The authors participated in the COST ¹ Action network IS1406, “Enhancing Children's Oral Language Skills Across Europe and Beyond,” which provided an opportunity to conduct cross-country qualitative interviews with parents. The aim of this pilot study was to explore ways in which parents construed and described speech and language disorders across countries. Method: Semistructured qualitative interviews were conducted with parents from 10 families in 10 different countries. The data were analyzed using thematic analysis. Findings: The overall theme was “acknowledging parental expertise.” The parents described, in detail, ways in which their children's speech and language (dis)abilities had an impact on the children's everyday life. Three subthemes were identified: impairment, disability, and changes over time. Conclusions: The findings suggest that, across a range of countries, parents demonstrated contextualized understandings of their children's speech and language (dis)abilities, along with the everyday functional implications of the disorders. Hence, despite not holding professional knowledge about language disorders, the voices, views, understandings, and personal experiences of parents in relation to their child's disorder should be listened to when planning therapy services. Supplemental Material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.14109881